In a pivotal move to secure data privacy, the United States House of Representatives has recently passed new regulations banning the use of large language models of artificial intelligence (AI) in its offices, with the singular exception being OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus service.
This information was conveyed in a memo circulated by the US House’s chief administrative officer, Catherine Szpindor, underlining newly instituted restrictions, citing security considerations as the prime driver.
Szpindor said: “House offices using the ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot are only authorised to use the ChatGPT Plus version of the product. The Plus version of the product incorporates important privacy features that are necessary to protect House data.”
The memo further specified that “no other versions of ChatGPT or other large language models AI software are authorised for use in the House currently.”
Not to be incorporated into workflow
The document elucidates provisions limiting the application of the software by House members.
The software can only be used for "research and evaluation", effectively barring its incorporation into everyday workflow.
Additionally, the memo dictates a prohibition on sharing any sensitive information via prompts and mandates that ChatGPT Plus is used with all privacy settings enabled.
New legislative horizon
Since April, OpenAI has permitted users of ChatGPT and ChatGPT Plus to erase their chat history and accounts but such deleted information lingers on the ChatGPT servers for an extra 30 days.
In a blog post published in April, OpenAI hinted at launching a ChatGPT business subscription service replete with more extensive data control features but details on how this service might differ from ChatGPT Plus remain scant.
However, a new legislative horizon could be on the cards with US Representatives Ted Lieu, Ken Buck and Anna Eshoo recently proposing a bipartisan bill to establish a federal artificial intelligence commission with the primary directive to extend regulatory oversight to the US AI industry at large.