ChatGPT screen

Worth Reading – ChatGPT can now connect to Outlook, Teams, Gmail, Google Drive, and other services

From an end-user perspective, this is interesting and smart.

ChatGPT can now integrate with external services like Outlook, Teams, Gmail, and Google Drive to access real-time data for more relevant responses.

From the perspective of being responsible for securing AI use within a firm’s M365 environment, this is somewhat unsettling.

https://www.neowin.net/news/chatgpt-can-now-connect-to-outlook-teams-gmail-google-drive-and-other-services/

I think one of the advantages Microsoft has with Copilot is that it can access my work data. It can see my email, Teams chats, meeting transcripts and notes, calendar, etc., and offer assistance when working with any of that data. Another advantage is that all these interactions remain within our M365 tenant. They can be secured, labeled, retained for a set time, etc.

This connection to ChatGPT sounds like the first advantage disappearing, and OpenAI openly competing with Copilot for M365 customers. (And here I thought they were partners?)

The second advantage remains, I suspect, and that’s the part that makes me slightly nervous. When ChatGPT is reading data from within the tenant that is confidential, what is it doing with that confidential information? Is it being stored somewhere that is outside of our control? Is it subject to whatever is going on with the court’s demand that OpenAI save every ChatGPT interaction?

Do I have the option to set my retention period, or collect interactions from ChatGPT in the event of an eDiscovery or investigative need? Do I have the option to label sensitive documents and prevent ChatGPT from accessing the data within them? I don’t know.  Those are questions I hope to get some answers to, and will need to investigate before someone decides to try and connect their ChatGPT Pro account to their M365 work account.

Given the uncertainty around the security of this announcement, how likely are you to allow or block this ChatGPT connection to your M365 data?

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