NITDA Warns Organisations Against Uploading Confidential Data To AI Platforms

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has warned organisations and their employees against uploading personal, classified or confidential information to public artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot.
NITDA issued the warning in an advisory posted on X weekend, through its Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team (CERRT.NG), highlighting data protection and security risks associated with the use of public large language models for drafting, research and other work-related activities.
The agency said information entered into public AI platforms might no longer remain under the control of the organisation that provided it, as such data could be retained, logged or used by service providers to train AI models.
It warned that employees using public AI tools could inadvertently expose personally identifiable information (PII), classified government information or confidential organisational data.
According to NITDA, where PII is involved, such exposure could constitute a personal data breach, potentially violating applicable data protection laws and resulting in legal consequences.
The agency also cautioned that disclosure of classified, official-use or confidential information to external AI providers could compromise national security and public trust, while exposing organisations and their employees to disciplinary or legal consequences.
To reduce the risks, NITDA advised organisations and their staff not to enter confidential, classified, official-use or personal data into public AI platforms.
It recommended that organisations use only approved AI tools for official work and remove, anonymise or pseudonymise PII and other sensitive information before using AI platforms.
NITDA further advised users to review the privacy and data-handling terms of AI platforms before using them and not to upload internal documents without specific authorisation.
The agency urged organisations and their staff to comply with existing AI, information security and data protection policies when using AI tools.
The warning comes amid growing adoption of generative AI tools by organisations for research, drafting and other workplace tasks, increasing the need for safeguards around corporate, personal and government data.