United States House of Representatives banned the congressional staff from using Microsoft Corporation's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Copilot, Axios reported on Friday citing guidance it obtained.
"The Microsoft Copilot application has been deemed by the Office of Cybersecurity to be a risk to users due to the threat of leaking House data to non-House approved cloud services," it was said in the guidance. The chatbot will be deleted from "all House Windows devices," it was further written.
A Microsoft spokesperson told Axios that the company is aware government institutions "have higher security requirements," adding that a version for this specific audience will be released later during the year. The Office of the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) told Axios that the ban only "applies to the commercial version." The government version will be evaluated "when it becomes available," the CAO's office noted.
