AI and GDPR: What Your Legal Team Needs to Know

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.

Why This Matters for Your Business

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.

1. How You Protect and Store User Data

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:

• Collecting more data than necessary
• Not explaining to customers why you need their data
• Not keeping proper records of what you’ve collected and how

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.

2. Explaining How Your AI Makes Decisions

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:

• Patient diagnosis
• Hiring decisions
• Loan approvals

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.

3. Giving Users Control Over Their Data

This is fundamental to the GDPR. Users should be able to:

• Access their data at any time
• Correct their data if needed
• Delete their data (the “right to be forgotten”)
• Move their data elsewhere

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?

Keeping Your Business Out of Trouble

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.

Want to Learn More?

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.

Is Your Company’s Data Safe with AI? Critical Vulnerabilities You Need to Know

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?

The Samsung Wake-Up Call

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.

What Happens When You Hit “Send”?

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:

1. Your competitor could access your proprietary information for the price of a £20 monthly subscription
2. Customer data might be exposed without their consent
3. Business secrets could become public knowledge virtually overnight

And that’s just the beginning.

Three Critical Vulnerabilities You Can’t Ignore

In the podcast, I break down three essential points every business owner needs to understand:

1. Data Exposure Risks

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.

2. Hidden Vulnerabilities

Beyond simple data exposure, there are deeper security concerns:

• Provider security breaches – What if the AI company itself gets hacked?
• Prompt injection attacks – Sophisticated users can “jailbreak” AI systems to reveal information they shouldn’t
• Accidental cross-contamination – Remember when some users could suddenly see other people’s chat histories?

3. Practical Protection Strategies

The good news is that you don’t have to abandon these powerful tools. I outline a practical framework for using AI safely:

• Read those privacy policies (yes, really!)
• Categorise your data into public, internal, confidential, and restricted
• Develop clear AI usage policies for your team
• Consider private AI implementations for sensitive operations

A Real Concern for Real Businesses

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.

Listen to the Full Episode

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.

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