Do you remember Tay? In 2016, Microsoft launched an AI chatbot on Twitter, named Tay, designed to learn from casual and playful conversation. The result was a spectacular public failure. Within 16 hours, the Internet had taught Tay to be wildly offensive, racist, and conspiratorial. Microsoft had to pull the plug in a panic.

It was a perfect, public, and embarrassing example of Garbage In, Garbage Out. The AI became a mirror of the unmoderated, often toxic, data it was fed.

Now, let's ask a scary question: Your employees are all using new, public AI tools to be more productive. What company data are they feeding it? Without a policy, you are begging for a data leak or a legal disaster.

The Data Leak Nightmare 

The problem is fundamental: When your employee pastes a chunk of text into a free, public AI tool, where do they think it goes? They’re not in a private chat. That data—your confidential client list, your secret marketing plan, an employee's performance review, or your draft legal contract—can and will be used to train the public model. It's like taking your most sensitive company documents and posting them on a public library bulletin board. You're teaching the world's AI your company's secrets.

The result is that your secret sauce is now in the public soup. A competitor could one day ask the AI a question, and your proprietary data might be used to form the answer. You lose control the moment you hit enter.

Hallucinating with Conviction

Public AI models are designed to be convincing, not necessarily accurate. They are notorious for hallucinating—a polite word for making things up. Crucially, they do this with 100 percent confidence.

Consider this scenario: Your salesperson asks the AI for research on a new client in AREASERVED. The AI invents facts about their business. Your salesperson confidently uses those facts in a proposal... and looks like a complete fool.

...or...

Your developer asks the AI to write some code. The AI provides a chunk of code that is stolen (violates copyright or an open-source license) from another company. You just put stolen property into your product.

In either scenario, you are now flying blind, making critical business decisions based on facts that are complete fiction, all while opening your business to copyright-infringement lawsuits.

What Do You Do?

The reality is that you can't just ban AI. It's like trying to ban the Internet in 1999. Your team is trying to be more productive so they will use these tools and if you just forbid it, they will simply use it on their personal phones and home computers. You just made a technology criticised for its lack of transparency, less transparent.

Conversely, having no policy is, by default, a bad policy. You are defaulting to a Wild West where there are no rules, no security, and no guidance, leaving your business exposed.

The Proactive Solution 

At COMPANYNAME we don't just fix things; we’re consultants and can help you strategize. You don't need to ban AI; you need to manage it. We help you implement two key things:

AI Acceptable Use Policy

We help you draft a simple, clear policy that educates your team and provides a clear HR and legal boundary.

The Private AI Portal

Instead of letting your team use public tools, we help you deploy a secure, private AI.

It then learns from your data, for you. It can summarize your emails, draft your reports, and analyze your spreadsheets... and that data never, ever leaves your private, secure environment. Your team gets the productivity, and your company gets the security.

AI is a powerful tool, not a toy. Used without a plan, it can get messy, but used with a plan, it's a massive competitive advantage.

Don't let your business be the next public, embarrassing experiment. Stop the Wild West and get a strategy.

If you're a business in AREASERVED and you're not sure how to build an AI policy or which private AI tools are right for you, that's what we're here for. Call COMPANYNAME at PHONENUMBER for expert technology consulting.