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Everywhere you look, people are talking about AI – specifically ChatGPT – and how it can be used by businesses. Your business has followed suit and made an account, but where do you start? It is true this technology has exciting capabilities. However, it is important to know how to use it without getting yourself into a legal nightmare. This article will set out how you can use AI like ChatGPT sensibly and effectively to help promote efficiency in your business without breaching the law.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is one of the most common forms of AI that businesses are increasingly using. It operates like an advanced chatbot designed to understand and generate human-like text. ChatGPT generates its answers based on vast datasets that it has learned from “training”. It does not use the internet, and so the GPT-3.5 model (the free version) only has access to information up to September 2021.
How Are Businesses Using ChatGPT?
Businesses continue to discover new ways of using ChatGPT, especially as technology advances. It has gained popularity by being able to generate content within seconds. Some high-level examples of how businesses use ChatGPT are:
- drafting correspondence, such as emails or responses to customer complaints;
- generating content, such as social media posts, and product descriptions;
- reviewing or proofreading work; and
- basic analysis, such as market research using publicly available data.
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The Do’s
Fact Check
There are limitations to the data ChatGPT uses to generate its content. Currently, GPT-3.5 has only been trained on data available up to September 2021. This means that its responses can often include incorrect or inaccurate data, facts, or figures, which subsequently results in misleading or unreliable information in a business document. ChatGPT is also not yet advanced enough to interpret difficult data, such as legislation. For instance, ChatGPT is notorious for suggesting legislation or regulations that simply don’t exist!
It is, therefore, essential that you fact-check any content or document that you use ChatGPT to produce.
Use It to Inspire, Not to Create
It can be tempting to let ChatGPT take the wheel when drafting your documents. While it is a useful tool to point you in the right direction or give you a headstart, ChatGPT should not be used blindly. Automated drafting using ChatGPT lacks human touch and intuition. It may not capture the exact tone, sentiment, or empathy needed for certain business documents that require a personal touch. It is best to use its responses as inspiration for the work that you can tailor according to your business style.
Keep It Simple
There is no doubt ChatGPT has emerged as a powerful disruptor in the business world. However, it is designed to understand and generate responses based on the information it receives from a user. If this information is confusing or ambiguous, any responses generated will be limited. It is, therefore, important to keep your communication on ChatGPT clear, direct, and simple. This enhances its ability to provide the most relevant and appropriate response.
De-Identify Information
As previously mentioned, ChatGPT uses previous inputs from users to generate future content. When using ChatGPT for your business, it is essential that you do not use any information that could identify your clients, employees, customers or competitors. This could raise issues with privacy and confidentiality. Instead, you should ensure that you de-identify your input to ChatGPT. This is where you remove or modify information that could identify a company or individual so that the data or text is anonymous.
The Don’ts
Input Personal or Confidential Information
One of the key risks businesses face when using ChatGPT is the risk of breaching privacy laws and confidentiality obligations. This can happen when a business includes sensitive information in their input to AI and then the AI uses this data as “training” for future responses. It is, therefore, best practice to never include sensitive or identifiable information when using any AI tool, unless you have otherwise read their terms and conditions and are comfortable with how personal data will be used..
Not Comply With Privacy Laws
When handling personal data, you must ensure it aligns with UK GDPR rules. Under the data protection principles, you must ensure personal data that you handle is used fairly, lawfully and transparently. You will likely violate key UK privacy laws where you:
- use customer information to train third-party generative AIs; or
- provide personal data to generative AIs without your customers’ consent or where your customers do not expect you will do this.
Breach Confidentiality Obligations
Generally, contracts will contain an obligation of confidentiality. You will likely breach your confidentiality obligations if you disclose confidential information to a third party. This third party may be a generative AI platform. You may not be in breach if your disclosure falls under an exception listed in your contract. Absent such an exception, your disclosure will likely constitute a breach of contract. You will likely have to pay a financial sum as compensation to the party whose confidence you breached.
Depending on the type of business you run, you may also have statutory confidentiality obligations. If you are a doctor or a lawyer for instance, you also owe statutory obligations to your patients and clients.
Claim Ownership
The law in the UK is still playing catch up with AI. At present, the law remains generally unsettled as to who owns the work generated by AI. Prior to using an AI platform, you should always chedk the terms and conditions. Checking these terms and conditions will inform you as to how you may permissibly use the platform’s output.
There is a risk that the AI platform might have infringed on someone else’s IP rights. For example, they might have copied someone’s intellectual property and then generated it for you to use, which could land you in hot water. So, it is important to be careful about this in case you unintentionally breach a third party’s IP rights.
If your business has a website, you will need to provide terms and conditions of usage for your website’s users. These Website Terms of Use set out the rules for people using your website.
Key Takeaways
Although ChatGPT and similar generative AIs are still in their early stages, they are already proving to be powerful tools for businesses. These tools allow businesses to produce work more efficiently. However, with new technology comes new risks. It is essential that businesses exercise caution with what they input into ChatGPT and similar generative AIs. Equally, you must be wary of the output generated by the generative AI platforms. Fact-checking and de-identifying input are both key to ensuring the work being produced is accurate, reliable and complies with privacy and confidentiality obligations. The work produced must also be edited by a person who can add their personal touch, creativity and intelligence to put themselves in the best position from an intellectual property perspective.
If you are unsure whether your business is using AI in a legally compliant manner, contact our experienced data, privacy and IT lawyers as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.
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