- General AI chat tools are very good at writing, summarising and explaining. Keep using them for that.
- They do not know your company's records. So people paste documents in, and company information leaves the company.
- They do not know who is allowed to see what. Whoever pastes the document decides.
- For questions about your own company, use a tool that reads your records, follows your permissions and shows its sources.
Most people at work have now used a general AI chat tool. They are remarkable at drafting an email, summarising a long report, explaining a technical term or suggesting a better way to phrase something. So when a question comes up about the company, it is natural to ask the same tool.
The trouble is that a general chat tool knows a great deal about the world, and nothing about your company.
What happens in practice
Ask a general chat tool "how much notice do we need to give Northwind?" and it cannot know. So it does one of two things. It gives a general answer about notice periods, which sounds helpful and is not your contract. Or you paste the contract in, and it answers from that.
The second is where the problems start.
of employees admit using AI in ways that break company rules, including uploading sensitive company information into free public AI tools
KPMG and University of Melbourne, 2025 ↗of employees say they hide their use of AI at work
KPMG and University of Melbourne, 2025 ↗These figures come from a 2025 study of more than 48,000 people in 47 countries. People are not being careless. They are trying to get their work done, with the best tool they have.
Four risks of using a general AI chatbot at work
It does not know your records. It cannot search your email, shared drives or chats. It only knows what someone pastes in, so it misses the email that changed the agreement and the newer version in another folder.
It does not know who may see what. When someone pastes the board's minutes or a salary spreadsheet into a chat, the tool has no idea whether that person should have it, or whether the next person they share the answer with should.
Company information leaves the company. Depending on the tool and its settings, what is pasted in may be stored outside your company, and in some free versions may be used to improve the service. Once it is pasted, you no longer control it.
There is no shared record. The answer lives in one person's chat history. Nobody else can find it, and when that person leaves, it leaves too.
Use both, for different jobs
- What does our contract with Northwind say?
- Which price list is current?
- What is our procedure for a cold room alarm?
- How many complaints did we have in March?
- Help me write a polite reminder email
- Explain what this technical term means
- Summarise this public report
- Suggest a clearer way to phrase this
The rule is simple: questions about your company go to a tool that reads your records and follows your permissions. Everything else can go to a general tool, as long as nothing confidential goes with it.
In short
General AI chat tools are excellent at writing and explaining, and poor at answering questions about your company, because they do not know your records or your permissions. Using them for company questions means pasting company information in. Keep them for general work, and use a tool built on your own records for everything about your company.