Data Leakage

Definition

A security failure where an AI system accidentally exposes sensitive, private, or proprietary information to unauthorized users.

Explain Like I'm New

Telling a secret to the AI, and the AI blabbing it to the next person who asks.

Real World Example

Samsung engineers pasted top-secret, proprietary code into ChatGPT to ask it to fix bugs. OpenAI's systems saved that code to their training servers. Samsung had to instantly ban all employees from using ChatGPT to prevent their company secrets from leaking to the public.

Common Use Cases

•Corporate security policies
•On-premise AI deployments

Interview Questions

basic

Why do massive corporations often ban their employees from using the free version of ChatGPT?

intermediate

How does RAG architecture inherently present a massive Data Leakage risk if not built perfectly?

Flash Cards

Question

Why ban free ChatGPT?

Click to reveal answer

Answer

Because anything typed into the free version is explicitly collected by OpenAI and used to train future models, meaning corporate secrets could be regurgitated to a competitor down the line.

Question

RAG leakage risk?

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Answer

If you dump your entire company's Google Drive into a Vector Database for RAG, the AI can read everything. If an intern asks the AI 'What is the CEO's salary?', the RAG system might retrieve the confidential HR document and tell the intern. The retrieval system MUST enforce user permission roles.