Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer just for tech giants. From small shops to large corporations, businesses are using AI to save time, cut costs, and serve customers better. Even if you’re not using AI today, your competitors might be. That’s why your business needs an AI strategy not to replace humans, but to work smarter.
Read MoreThis is a companion post to the latest episode of the Tech Your Business podcast. Tune in to the full episode for a deeper dive into private AI hosting.
Have you noticed more companies banning AI tools because of privacy worries? I’ve seen this trend growing recently, and it’s concerning. Why? Because many businesses don’t realise there’s a better option than giving up on AI altogether.
The truth is, you can use AI fully in your business without your data ever leaving your premises. In fact, your AI doesn’t even need to be connected to the internet. That’s what I explored in the latest episode of the Tech Your Business podcast – the concluding part of our three-episode series on AI security and compliance.
When most of us think about using AI in business, we imagine signing up for ChatGPT, Claude, or another service, then sending our data back and forth. But there’s another approach entirely.
Private AI means hosting the AI model on your own server, whether that’s physically in your office or on a cloud you control. Everything stays within your environment. The data, the processing, the outputs, none of it leaves your premises.
No more worrying about privacy policies, where your data is processed, or if your information is being used to train models that your competitors might access. Everything stays with you, full stop.
You decide who sees what, how the model is used, and you can even take it completely offline to eliminate certain security risks. Fancy having a comprehensive audit trail? That’s easier too when everything’s in-house.
Yes, public AI models seem cheap (or even free), but what’s the true cost when you factor in:
When you run the numbers properly, private AI often makes financial sense, especially for data-sensitive industries.
Public AI models are built to work for everyone but your business isn’t everyone, is it?
With private AI, you can train the model on your business data, your customer information, and your knowledge base. The results are tailored to your company’s terminology, processes, and specific needs. This customisation means you’ll get more relevant and useful outputs than from general-purpose models.
It might sound like a massive undertaking, but for most use cases, it’s simpler than you’d think. At a basic level, you need:
Depending on your use case, implementation typically takes around 90 days to set up, test, and integrate with your existing systems.
If you’re considering private AI, here’s a simple approach:
This post is just scratching the surface of what we covered in the podcast. If you’re interested in learning more about private AI for your business, listen to the full episode of Tech Your Business.
And don’t forget to check out the first two episodes in this series, where we discussed data security with AI and GDPR compliance issues.
Got questions about implementing private AI in your business? I’d love to chat about your specific needs—get in touch and let’s see how we can help.
This concludes our three-part series on AI security and compliance. Join us next week for a brand new topic on the Tech Your Business podcast.
In this episode of the Tech Your Business podcast, I look at the intersection between AI and the GDPR regulations that affect so many businesses today.
Just a couple of months back, Clear View AI was hit with a €30.5 million fine by the Dutch Data Protection Agency for GDPR violations related to their AI systems. If your business operates in or serves customers in the EU, this story should make you pay attention. The regulators are watching closely when it comes to AI and data protection.
Many businesses are implementing AI without fully understanding the legal implications. Your marketing team might be excited about AI-powered customer insights and your operations folks want automated decision-making, but has anyone consulted your legal team?
In this podcast episode, I break down three critical things you need to know about using AI while staying compliant with GDPR regulations.
Before using AI with customer data, you need to be careful about how you’re collecting and storing it.
GDPR requires either specific consent or a legitimate business need to store customer data. Plus, you need to track every step in your data collection process.
Common mistakes include:
The Clear View example I mentioned, with their €30.5 million fine, demonstrates what happens when companies don’t comply with GDPR requirements for data collection.
A key question to ask yourself: Is your business audit-ready for the data it collects and holds? If not, it’s time to fix that.
Article 22 of the GDPR specifically covers automated decision-making. It states that people have the right to know if decisions about them are being made algorithmically rather than by humans, and you need to be able to explain the logic behind those decisions.
If you’re using AI for things like:
You need to have logs and explanations for how those decisions are reached.
Using interpretable AI models that explain their thinking process is helpful, and always have humans reviewing AI decisions. This not only keeps you GDPR-compliant but also ensures fairness.
This is fundamental to the GDPR. Users should be able to:
When a user asks what data you have on them, you typically have about a month to produce everything – which is only possible with strict record-keeping.
Clear View was also fined an additional €20 million by French authorities because they couldn’t produce customer data when requested.
Ask yourself: Can your business easily provide customer data and allow customers to delete or download their data whenever they want?
The key to avoiding GDPR issues with your AI systems comes down to documentation and clear processes.
In the next episode of this series, I’ll be talking about private AI systems – AI models hosted within your own infrastructure that can eliminate many of these compliance challenges.
If you found this episode helpful, make sure to subscribe to the Tech Your Business podcast. For more information about AI implementation that keeps you on the right side of regulations, visit our website at targetict.co.uk.
Remember, this isn’t legal advice – for that, you’ll want to speak with a qualified lawyer. But it is a good starting point for conversations with your legal team before your next AI implementation.
This blog post summarizes Episode 2 of our three-part series on AI security and compliance. Catch up on Episode 1: “Is Your Company’s Data Safe with AI?” and stay tuned for Episode 3 next week where we talk about hosting your AI models privately.
In our latest Tech Your Business podcast episode, I talk about something that’s been keeping me up at night recently – the security of your business data when using AI chatbots.
It seems like everyone’s at it these days, doesn’t it? Generating text, creating images, summarising documents, writing code… these AI tools have become absolutely indispensable. The productivity gains are frankly staggering – we’re seeing small teams accomplish what used to require entire departments.
But here’s the rub: every time you hit “send” on that chat interface, where exactly is your data going?
Remember that incident with Samsung last year? Engineers at one of the world’s largest tech companies popped some of their proprietary source code into a popular AI chat system to check it. Next thing you know, that confidential code was… well, not so confidential anymore.
It was a proper disaster – suddenly their internal code was accessible to competitors and potentially exposed security vulnerabilities in their products.
And Samsung isn’t alone. The Dutch healthcare scandal around patient data being fed into AI systems caused an absolute uproar with data protection authorities.
Here’s what most business owners don’t realise: AI chat systems need data to function. Loads of it. They’ve been trained on books, articles, websites – terabytes upon terabytes of information.
When you feed your sensitive business data into these systems, unless you’ve explicitly opted out (and sometimes even if you have), that information can become part of what the AI knows. Which means:
And that’s just the beginning.
In the podcast, I break down three essential points every business owner needs to understand:
The fundamental issue is that many public AI systems retain what you feed them, potentially exposing your proprietary information. That brilliant process you developed? That unique market analysis? That customer database? All potentially up for grabs.
Beyond simple data exposure, there are deeper security concerns:
The good news is that you don’t have to abandon these powerful tools. I outline a practical framework for using AI safely:
This isn’t theoretical scaremongering. Major corporations like Cisco are implementing extensive training programmes for their staff on responsible AI use. Others have banned certain AI tools outright.
As I mention in the podcast, AI isn’t going anywhere. The productivity benefits are simply too enormous to ignore. But incorporating it thoughtfully and safely into your business processes? That’s non-negotiable.
This blog post only scratches the surface of what we cover in the full podcast episode. Give it a listen here:
Listen to “Is Your Company’s Data Safe with AI?” on the Tech Your Business Podcast
This is the first in our three-part series on AI data security. Next up: “AI & GDPR: What Your Legal Team Needs to Know.“
Target ICT helps businesses implement secure, effective AI solutions that drive growth while protecting sensitive data. Learn more about our AI implementation services.
Are you ready to take your small business to the next level? Then you ought to look into Custom AI Solutions. These are not your typical AI tools, either but are specially designed to meet the demands of your company, assisting you in experiencing unprecedented growth.Read More
We are professionals in IT service delivery and we would love to handle your IT issues. Contact us today so we can determine how we can work together.
