The European Parliament has reportedly barred lawmakers from using artificial intelligence tools on their work devices, citing cybersecurity and privacy risks by uploading confidential mail to the cloud.
Per email saw Politicoparliament’s IT department said it could not guarantee the security of data uploaded to AI firms’ servers and that the full extent of information shared with AI firms was “still being assessed”.
As such, the email stated: “It is considered safer to keep such features disabled.”
Uploading data to AI chatbots such as Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, means that US authorities can demand that the companies operating the chatbots hand over information about their users.
AI chatbots also typically rely on using information that users provide or upload to improve their models, increasing the chance that potentially sensitive information uploaded by an individual can be shared and seen by other users.
Europe has some of the strongest data protection rules in the world. But the European Commission, the executive body that oversees the 27-member bloc, last year tabled new legislative proposals was aimed at relaxing data protection rules to make it easier for tech giants to train their artificial intelligence models on Europeans’ data, sparking outrage from critics who said the move was pandering to US tech giants.
The move by European lawmakers to limit access to artificial intelligence products in their devices comes as several EU member states are re-examining their relationships with US tech giants, which remain subject to US law and the unpredictable whims and demands of the Trump administration.
In recent weeks, the US Department of Homeland Security has issued hundreds of subpoenas demanding that US tech and social media giants hand over information about people, including Americans, who have publicly criticized the Trump administration’s policies.
Google, Meta and Reddit complied in several cases, even though the subpoenas were not issued by a judge and not enforced by a court.
