Shadow AI is the use of AI tools by employees without the company's approval or knowledge, typically personal chatbot accounts fed with work data.
Category
AI, Data Governance
Also known as
unsanctioned AI; unapproved AI tools
It is shadow IT for the AI era, and it grows wherever the approved tools are slower than the free ones. The risk is less the tool than the data pasted into it: customer records, contracts, campaign plans.
In practice
A ban doesn't stop it; it hides it. Give people an approved tool with a data agreement, then write down what can't be pasted anywhere, in one sentence they will remember.
Something out of date?