EU Parliament bans AI use on government work devices

The European Parliament on Monday sent an email to lawmakers and their staff announcing it had disabled built-in AI features on corporate devices over fears of cybersecurity and data protection vulnerabilities. The email claimed that some of these AI assistants "use cloud services" to carry out tasks that the local device is perfectly capable of handling.

As these features continue to evolve and become available on more devices, the full extent of data shared with service providers is still being assessed. Until this is fully clarified, it is considered safer to keep such features disabled.

The lawmakers were also urged to apply similar precautions to their personal devices, especially if they use them for work. The email warned them to avoid letting work documents or private communications get scanned by AI features and advised caution when installing third-party AI applications and granting them data access.

In a statement to POLITICO, the EU Parliament said that its press service "constantly monitors cybersecurity threats and quickly deploys the necessary measures to prevent them." That sounds nice, though POLITICO notes that the Parliament refused to clarify exactly what built-in AI features have been disabled or even what operating systems the work devices run on, citing the "sensitive nature" of the information.

Blocking AI tools, especially on government devices and systems, is nothing new. DeepSeek, for example, last year was banned from use on government hardware in multiple countries, including Taiwan, the US, and Australia, all in the name of "national security."

Last summer, Madhu Gottumukkala, the acting director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), was found to have uploaded sensitive documents to the public version of ChatGPT.

He was caught after CISA's own automated cybersecurity sensors detected the multiple uploads in August 2025, prompting an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The documents were thankfully not classified, but they were marked "For Official Use Only" and contained sensitive information about government contracts.