Is Shadow AI contaminating your company?

marketing14560
Nov 7
2 min read

Happy Friday

Have you heard of Shadow AI? It's a new, serious problem and the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about.

I'm sure that you want your company, your team to use AI to be more productive, right? But like every new technology, it helps helps to have some guidelines everyone at the organization agrees upon before using it for work. This is where Shadow AI creeps in. According to a new study, at least 1 out of 4 employees have been infested by it.

So what is Shadow AI? It's the unauthorized use of AI tools and applications by employees without the knowledge or approval of IT or security teams. It occurs when employees use external, unvetted AI services for productivity, but this could bypass corporate governance and can create significant risks such as data leaks, compliance failures and introduce security vulnerabilities.

The Takeaway

It helps to understand what Shadow AI tools are being used for. Here are the top 6 ways you or your team may have let it creep in:

1) Sharing customer call notes to transcribe and summarize

2) To write performance reviews and in the hiring processes

3) Analyzing customer data

4) Analyzing company data

5) To write a report or presentation using company data

6) To make an important decision by sharing company data

Why is this a problem? Because transcribing call notes with shadow AI can expose personal, private information and violate the confidentiality you keep with your customers. Using AI for performance reviews or hiring invites bias and legal risk. Feeding AI customer data can breach privacy and residency rules. Letting AI parse company data can leak trade secrets. Having AI write reports from internal data can hallucinate facts and disclose confidential details. And lastly, letting AI steer you into making important decisions can be disastrous, especially if it doesn't have all the facts.

In short, don't do these behaviors with AI! Put together an AI acceptable use policy (which any AI engine can help you write!) that everyone at your company can agree on. AI is a great tool - let's all agree to use it wisely.

Stay safe out there.

-Attila

New Friday Funnies!

What's a couch potato's favorite TV show in November?

M.A.S.H.

What's a pumpkin's favorite sport?

Squash

Why did the cranberries turn red?

They saw the turkey dressing

Why did the lobster blush?

Because it saw the ocean's bottom

What's brown and sticky?