Parliamentary Digital Service bows to MPs’ demands, despite security fears over gen-AI tools.
Parliament is to trial Microsoft’s Copilot generative AI technology before the end of the year, following MPs demanding better technology to help them manage their workloads.
The news was revealed by the outgoing MP for Broxbourne, Sir Charles Walker, who served on the House of Commons committee investigating new digital tools. The committee heard from MPs who claim they need new and better tools to help them manage their workloads.
Speaking before Parliament was dissolved ahead of the 4th July general election, Walker told the House: “The Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS) has been assessing Microsoft’s generative AI toolset, Copilot, which includes artificial intelligence for mailboxes.
“That tool will aid Members and staff in their management of day-to-day administrative activities across Microsoft 365 applications. PDS is conducting further necessary technical work, and it is expected that a trial of the new capability will start with Members before the end of the year.”
The decision follows demonstrations of the technology to Members earlier this year, followed by internal workshops with Parliament’s Microsoft partner to work out how Copilot might be integrated within Parliament’s IT estate.
The PDS doesn’t currently provide any generative AI tools to MPs, but adoption of Copilot – or any other form of generative AI – could bring significant security risks.
Copilot is already the subject of a ban in the US House of Representatives, following a restriction on the use of ChatGPT, which Copilot is based on. According to guidance obtained by Axios, Copilot “has been deemed by the Officer of Cybersecurity to be a risk to users due to the threat of leaking House data to non-House approved cloud services”.
Gen-AI applications typically run in the cloud, with data exported to services to respond to queries. User queries are typically also used to fine tune the AI. That means sensitive emails, documents and more could be processed on servers not security cleared for government work. In the House of Representatives, Copilot is blocked on all House Windows devices.
Gen-AI models have been accused of leaking data, with providers using user data to further refine and train their models, and the potential for information provided by one user to be reflected in answers to queries to the next. They may also be susceptible to a range of adversarial attacks, according to security researchers.
Nevertheless, Microsoft has been working on a government version of gen-AI tools that it expects will address these security issues. It will release this later in the year, but it is unclear whether MPs will be trialling the commercial or government version of Copilot. Users of other versions of Copilot may also question why they are not afforded such courtesies.
MPs are aware of the security issues gen-AI poses, with Walker telling the House in May: “PDS and the security services are working really hard to make sure that the House gets it right. There is so much opportunity presented by AI, but given the sensitive and important positions that we hold and that future colleagues will hold, we have to make sure that we get it right so that we are advantaging our constituents, not our enemies.”
