Microsoft Employees Banned From Using This AI Chatbot As The Race Heats Up – News18

Microsoft is building an AI empire that caters to customers and businesses. The company has invested billions into OpenAI and some more in other promising AI ventures. But Microsoft is equally aware of its competition and wants to stop them from accessing data of its employees.

New reports say Microsoft has banned its employees from using the AI chatbot developed by Perplexity AI. When you are competing with a host of tech giants and upcoming AI startups, these limitations are understandable and we have seen it happen regularly.

Not Allowed!

The employees over at Microsoft see a notification on their screen when they try to open the Perplexity’s website which blocks them from using the AI chatbot, as reported by Business Insider this week quoting unnamed sources. It is not the only AI chatbot that Microsoft has stopped its employees from using in the office.

Google’s Gemini AI chatbot and other popular AI tools are not available to its workforce. The company doesn’t need to give any reason for blocking access to these tools but you get an idea why this decision was taken in the first place.

The report claims Microsoft cites security and data concerns for this decision and it makes sense. After all, when you are building products in the similar vein to its rivals, you don’t want the core employees to use its competition products and give them hints into the data screening and insider information of their company.

These restrictions are forced on the employees to stop them from sharing data about exclusive projects that could be accessible to the rival AI chatbot if and when they decide to retrieve from their systems. Samsung had a similar order for its employees, Amazon also does not want its AI workforce to use third-party AI tools in the office which involves data that is not publicly available on the internet for people to consume.