The US Congress has banned the use of Microsoft’s Copilot artificial intelligence assistant on official devices. In a memo issued by Catherine Szpindor, Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives, Congressional staff are now officially banned from using this artificial intelligence chatbot.

US Congress bans the use of Microsoft Copilot on official devices

The Office of Security assessed that Copilot posed a risk due to the threat of leaking Congressional data to House-approved cloud services. There are no restrictions preventing staff from using Copilot on their own phones and laptops, but Copilot will now be blocked on all House-owned Windows devices.

A year ago, the Assembly imposed a strict restriction on the use of AI assistants like ChatGPT that work with OpenAI’s large language models. Now Copilot has been banned.

The House banned the use of the free version of ChatGPT on their computers, while allowing the paid version (ChatGPT Plus), which has stricter privacy controls, to be used for research and evaluation purposes. Recently, the White House outlined rules for federal agencies’ use of AI, 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 last year the company announced a roadmap of tools and services for government use. This includes the Azure OpenAI service for classified workloads and a new version of Microsoft 365’s Copilot assistant.

These tools and services will have higher levels of security, making them more suitable for handling sensitive data, the company said. Szpindor’s office will evaluate the government version of Copilot to determine whether it can be used on devices in the House before it is made available on home devices.

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