US House of Representatives bans Microsoft's AI assistant Copilot for congressional staffers

The U.S. House of Representatives has banned the use of Microsoft's AI assistant Copilot by congressional staffers. According to a directive from Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor, Copilot poses a risk to users by exposing data to unauthorized cloud services. Microsoft plans to introduce a set of AI tools for government agencies with higher security and compliance requirements this summer. The ban applies to the commercial version of Copilot; the government version is still under review. In June 2023, the House of Representatives restricted the use of ChatGPT for employees and banned the free version. Many companies block access to consumer chatbots like ChatGPT for fear of data leakage, relying on business versions with guarantees that data won't be used to train future models.