Microsoft Copilot was banned in the parliament! Here’s why

The US parliament has banned the use of Microsoft’s Copilot artificial intelligence assistant on official devices. A memo published by House Chief Administration Officer Catherine Szpindor stated that Congressional staff are now officially banned from using this AI chatbot.

US Congress bans use of Microsoft Copilot on official devices

The Office of Security assessed that Copilot poses a risk due to the threat of Congressional data leaking into house-sanctioned cloud services. However, there are no restrictions preventing staff from using Copilot on their own phones and laptops, but Copilot will now be blocked on all Parliament-owned Windows devices.

A year ago, the parliament imposed a strict limit on the use of artificial intelligence assistants that work with OpenAI’s large language models, such as ChatGPT. Now Copilot has been banned.

While banning the use of the free version of ChatGPT on computers, the Parliament allowed the use of the paid version (ChatGPT Plus), which has stricter privacy controls, for research and evaluation purposes. Recently, the White House set rules for federal agencies’ use of artificial intelligence, which will ensure that it does not jeopardize the rights and safety of Americans.

Microsoft recognizes that government users need higher security requirements. That’s why the company announced a roadmap of tools and services for government use last year. This includes the Azure OpenAI service for classified workloads and a new version of Microsoft 365’s Copilot assistant.

The company stated that these tools and services will have higher levels of security, making them more suitable for handling sensitive data. Szpindor’s office will evaluate the government version of Copilot to decide whether it can be used on devices in Parliament before it becomes available on home devices.

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