--- title: "Amazon Begs Employees Not to Leak Corporate Secrets to ChatGPT" description: "Leaky Faucet After catching snippets of artificial intelligence-generated text that looked a lot like company secrets, Amazon is now trying to head its employees off from leaking anything else to the algorithm. Internal Slack messages that were, it seems, leaked to Insider, depict the Amazon lawyer telling workers that they had \"already seen instances\" of outputs […]" date: "2023-01-25" modified: "2023-01-25" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-begs-employees-chatgpt" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "Amazon" - "chatgpt" - "coding" - "the digest" --- # Amazon Begs Employees Not to Leak Corporate Secrets to ChatGPT ![After catching snippets of ChatGPT text that looked a lot like company secrets, Amazon is now trying to head its employees off from leaking to the AI.]() *\Image: Getty Images\* ## Leaky Faucet After catching snippets of text generated by OpenAI's powerful ChatGPT tool that looked a lot like company secrets, Amazon is now trying to head its employees off from leaking anything else to the algorithm. According to internal Slack messages that were [leaked to *Insider*](), an Amazon lawyer told workers that they had "already seen instances" of text generated by ChatGPT that "closely" resembled internal company data. This issue seems to have come to a head recently because Amazon staffers and other tech workers throughout the industry have begun using ChatGPT as a "[coding assistant]()" of sorts to help them write or improve strings of code, the report notes. While this isn't necessarily a problem from a proprietary data perspective, it's a different story when employees start using the AI to improve upon existing internal code — which is already happening, according to the lawyer. "This is important because your inputs may be used as training data for a further iteration of ChatGPT," the lawyer wrote in the Slack messages viewed by *Insider*, "and we wouldn't want its output to include or resemble our confidential information." ## Copycat Killer The lawyer also revealed, per *Insider*, that Amazon is developing "similar technology" to ChatGPT — a revelation that appeared to pique the interest of employees who said that using the AI to assist their code-writing had resulted in a tenfold productivity boost. "If there is a current initiative to build a similar service," one employee said in the Slack exchanges, "I would be interested in committing time to helping build it if needed." While other industries flail and fuss at the concept of being replaced by AI, tech workers are seemingly more inclined to welcome it as a helpful coding tool — to the dismay of their employers' lawyers. **More on AI:** [*Rival Slams CNET: "We Will Never Have an Article Written by a Machine"*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()