All of Congress’s devices are blocked from using Microsoft Copilot

According to Axios, US Congressional staff members are no longer able to use Microsoft’s Copilot on their official devices. According to the magazine, House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor sent Congress staff a memo informing them that the AI chatbot is now formally forbidden. It appears that Copilot poses a risk “because of the possibility of House data being leaked to non-House approved cloud services,” according to the Office of Cybersecurity. Though they can still use Copilot on their personal laptops and phones, it will no longer be available on any Windows device that belongs to the Congress.

Congress imposed severe restrictions on ChatGPT’s usage about a year ago. Like Copilot, ChatGPT is underpinned by OpenAI’s extensive language models. Staff members were prohibited from utilizing the chatbot’s free version on House computers, but because ChatGPT Plus has more stringent privacy protections, they were nevertheless permitted to use it for study and assessment. In order to guarantee that any tool used by government agencies in the field of generative AI “does not endanger the rights and safety” of Americans, the White House has disclosed regulations pertaining to this topic.

Microsoft acknowledged to Axios that government users have higher security requirements. A new version of Microsoft 365’s Copilot assistant and an Azure OpenAI service for classified workloads were among the products and services included in the roadmap that was unveiled last year for government use. According to the corporation, all of those services and tools would have enhanced security levels, making them better suited for managing sensitive data. Axios reports that Szpindor’s office will assess the government version of Copilot when it becomes ready before determining whether or not it may be utilized on House devices.