The European Parliament bans artificial intelligence on lawmakers’ devices, due to security risks

The European Parliament has reportedly banned lawmakers from using built-in AI tools on their work devices, citing the cybersecurity and privacy risks of uploading confidential correspondence to the cloud.

In an email seen by Politico, Parliament’s IT department said it could not guarantee the security of data uploaded to AI companies’ servers, and that the full extent of information being shared with AI companies “is still being assessed.”

As such, “it is safer to keep these features disabled,” the email said.

Uploading data to AI-powered chatbots, such as Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft’s Copilot, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, means US authorities could require companies running chatbots to hand over information about their users.

AI chatbots typically rely on using information provided or uploaded by users to improve their models, increasing the chance that sensitive information uploaded by one person will be shared and viewed by other users.

Europe has some of the strongest data protection rules in the world. But the European Commission, the executive body that oversees the bloc of 27 member states, last year put forward new legislative proposals aimed at loosening its data protection rules to make it easier for tech giants to train their AI models on Europeans’ data, angering critics who said the move skewed toward American tech giants.

The move to restrict European lawmakers’ access to AI products on their devices comes at a time when many EU member states are reevaluating their relationships with American tech giants, which remain subject to US law and the whims and demands of the unpredictable Trump administration.

In recent weeks, the US Department of Homeland Security has sent hundreds of subpoenas demanding US tech and social media giants hand over information about people, including Americans, who have publicly criticized the Trump administration’s policies.

Google, Meta, and Reddit complied in several cases, although the subpoenas were neither issued by a judge nor enforced by a court.