National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has warned organisations and their staff against entering personal, classified or confidential information into public artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot, ravenewsonline reports.
NITDA issued the warning in an advisory posted on X at the weekend through its Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team (CERRT.NG).
The agency said using public AI tools for work such as drafting documents, research and other tasks could expose organisations to data protection and cybersecurity risks.
NITDA warned that information entered into public AI platforms may no longer remain fully under the control of the organisation that provided it.
The agency said such information could be stored, logged or used by service providers for various purposes, including training AI models.
It warned that workers using public AI tools could accidentally expose Personally Identifiable Information, classified government information or confidential organisational data.
NITDA said exposing personal information could amount to a data breach and may violate data protection laws, potentially leading to legal consequences.
The agency also warned that sharing classified, official use or confidential information with external AI providers could threaten national security and public trust.
It added that organisations and their employees could face disciplinary or legal consequences if sensitive information is improperly disclosed.
NITDA advised organisations and their employees not to enter confidential, classified, official use or personal information into public AI platforms.
It recommended that organisations use only AI tools approved for official work.
The agency also advised users to remove, anonymise or pseudonymise personal and other sensitive information before entering it into AI platforms.
NITDA urged users to carefully review the privacy and data handling policies of AI platforms before using them.
It also advised workers not to upload internal documents unless they have specific permission to do so.
The agency called on organisations and their staff to comply with existing AI, information security and data protection policies when using AI tools.
The warning comes amid growing concerns about the risks organisations face from employee mistakes, cyberattacks and poor data protection practices.
