Safety and compliance
What data should and shouldn't you share with AI?
A simple traffic light for what you always, sometimes and never put into an AI tool. Easy to explain to every employee.
5 min read
The most important rule for safe AI use is simple: think before you paste. A traffic light helps you do that quickly.
Green: usually fine
- General questions and explanations of concepts
- Text without names or confidential information, such as a template or public web copy
- Examples with made-up data
- Your own notes on ways of working, without people or customers
Amber: only with a business account and internal rules
- Emails and documents with names of customers or colleagues
- Quotes, contracts and internal figures
- Meeting notes
- Personal data you need for the task
Red: never in an AI tool
- Passwords, access codes and bank details
- National register numbers and copies of identity cards
- Health data and other special categories of personal data, unless in an approved environment with specific rules
- Information you're contractually bound to keep confidential
In doubt? Anonymise
You can often do the task without sensitive data. Replace names with "customer A", remove or round amounts, describe the situation more generally. The result is usually just as useful.
Why it matters
- Personal data falls under the GDPR. You remain responsible for what you do with it.
- On personal AI accounts, conversations may be used to train models unless you switch that off.
- Customers and partners trust you to keep their information safe.
Test yourself
You want to summarise a complaint email in a personal AI account. What's best?
Prompt to copy
Help me anonymise this text before I use it in an AI tool. Replace names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, account numbers and other identifying details with neutral placeholders such as [customer A] or [amount]. Then show a list of what you replaced.
[paste the text]Note: don't have an AI tool anonymise text containing highly sensitive data. Do that yourself.
