Amazon Issues Warning To Employees Over Third-Party AI Tools, Leaked Email Reveals: Report

Amazon.com Inc AMZN has issued internal guidelines advising its employees against using third-party generative AI tools for work-related tasks.

What Happened: Amazon cautioned its employees against using third-party generative AI tools for work, Business Insider reported. The company has expressed concerns about the ownership of data input and output by these tools, particularly in light of Microsoft‘s significant investment in OpenAI.

“While we may find ourselves using GenAl tools, especially when it seems to make life easier, we should be sure not to use it for confidential Amazon work,” the company warned employees in a recent email.

“Don’t share any confidential Amazon, customer, or employee data when you’re using 3rd party GenAl tools. Generally, confidential data would be data that is not publicly available.”

“At Amazon, we’ve been developing generative AI and large machine learning models for a long time. Employees use our AI models every day to invent on behalf of our customers – from generating code recommendations with Amazon CodeWhisperer to creating new experiences on Alexa. We have safeguards in place for employee use of these technologies, including guidance on accessing third-party generative AI services and protecting confidential information,” Amazon told Benzinga via email.

Amazon’s internal documents state that the use of third-party generative AI tools, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for confidential Amazon work is strictly prohibited. The policy also warns that companies providing generative AI services may claim ownership of any data input into their tools.

Employees were informally warned by an Amazon corporate lawyer last year not to provide OpenAI’s ChatGPT with any Amazon confidential information, as there had been instances of ChatGPT responses resembling internal Amazon data.

Despite these warnings, Amazon has softened its stance on Microsoft systems, as evidenced by its recent $1 billion, five-year deal for Microsoft 365 licenses.

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Why It Matters: Amazon’s move to caution its employees against using third-party generative AI tools comes amid a series of significant developments in the company’s AI landscape.

Earlier this year, Amazon’s AI chatbot, ‘Q,’ faced criticism for producing incorrect outputs, or ‘hallucinations,’ due to a rushed launch and the deployment of a less proficient version of Anthropic’s Claude AI model. In response, Amazon expanded its team of human reviewers to manually fine-tune the chatbot’s outputs.

Despite these challenges, Amazon unveiled an AI tool in its mobile app to respond to customer queries about products, aiming to simplify the shopping experience. The tool can also generate content in different styles, such as writing a haiku or emulating Yoda’s speech.

Amazon’s Founder, Jeff Bezos, has expressed optimism about the potential of generative AI tools, stating that they are more likely to save us than destroy us.

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