What it means in practice
Put a client contract into free ChatGPT and OpenAI may use it to train its model. Data protection means using the paid versions (ChatGPT Team or Enterprise, for instance), where you have a contractual guarantee that your data stays yours and the model does not learn from it.
Why companies need to know this
- Protecting know-how. You do not want AI advising your competitors on the basis of your internal strategy.
- Client trust. A leak of sensitive client data can destroy a company’s reputation.
- Legal consequences. Careless handling of data leads to avoidable fines and problems.
An example from practice
An accounting firm wanted to analyse invoices with AI. Instead of the free version they moved to a company account with training on data switched off, which gave them full confidentiality for client records. In our company AI workshops we teach the exact steps for configuring AI tools so your data stays completely safe.