Want to know your Manager's salary? Easy, just ask Copilot.

Bruce Mullan

Aug 10

2 min read

A botched Copilot AI deployment by an ASX listed company allowed unrestricted access to payroll data.

These are the stories you never hear about.

At a large ASX listed Australian company, Copilot was switched on to improve the productivity of its 9,000 employees.

But someone forgot to define the scope, purpose and boundaries of the AI system which is part and parcel of AI Governance.

Once Copilot was live, staff could ask it for salary information on any person in the company. As a dutiful AI assistant, it gladly obliged. 👌

Staff could look up the salary of their boss or coworkers. Anyone's salary was available for instant inspection.

Then came the kill switch and then the damage control. 🤦‍♀️

Copilot mistake repercussions

An embarrassing AI mistake to say the least but at the worst: a privacy breach with serious privacy, legal and compensation repercussions.

I cannot name the company for obvious reasons. I am assuming they will be dealing significant internal issues:

• Privacy breach and OAIC notifications

• Legal exposure and compensation

• Workplace distrust

• Remediation meetings

• Employee retention issues

Could this happen in your company?

Don't make the same mistake. Effective AI governance would have prevented this disaster.

Contact me to know more about how I partner with companies to confidently adopt AI and avoid high-profile failures like this one.

AI. Use responsibly.

Stay safe, Bruce

I write all my own content, you can tell by the odd typo and occasional missing word. I use AI for my research.

To learn about my upcoming public AI Governance workshops visit: Public workshops

To learn more about AI Governance, check out my Hitchhikers Guide to AI Governance Podcast.