However, businesses are still quite wary of ChatGPT, mainly because every request and all the information provided is added to its database – including sensitive corporate data, personal information, clients’ records, and names.
Is there a way businesses can use the potential of generative AI for themselves in a way that aligns with their goals and values, while also making security a top priority? We pondered about this at Inwedo for a while, and, using the tools offered by Microsoft Azure, we found such a way – creating a personalized instance of ChatGPT.
As the world of AI moves fast, we are committed to staying up-to-date with the latest advancements to enhance your business. That is why we are currently updating our personalized ChatGPT offer along with this article.
We will be sharing more details soon, so stay tuned! 🚀
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to let us know!
Why are businesses wary of ChatGPT?
ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) really is ground-breaking technology. Give it a single prompt, and it will generate anything – from song lyrics and stories, to movie summaries or social media copy. And what’s more, you’ll get an answer in a few seconds – no matter how lengthy or complicated the question or task might be.
But what is ChatGPT really? In simple terms, it’s a neural network-based language model that has been trained on 570 GB of data from various sources, all to teach the AI model about language, grammar, sentence structure, and the meaning of words and sentences. This allows it to almost perfectly understand written language and answer questions on any topic in the world (even the most complex ones), as long as it has access to the appropriate information.
570 GB might seem like a solid amount of data, but that’s still only a fraction of the entire amount on the internet. We create about 328 exabytes of data every single day – that’s 328 million terabytes. Just think about how much more powerful the new version of ChatGPT can become if they have access to more of this data.
The risks of using an open version of ChatGPT
What Samsung learned the hard way is that adding sensitive corporate data into the open GPT version isn’t exactly the best idea. Hoping to speed up their work, one of Samsung’s employees copied confidential source code into the chat to check for errors, while another asked the GPT to optimize the code they copied.
What they didn’t think about is that the shared code would be added into ChatGPT database for tuning purposes, meaning their trade secrets were now out in the open.
After the incident, Samsung and dozens of other companies have either restricted or outright banned their employees from using ChatGPT for work tasks, fearing that their own data might be used to train the algorithm.
Another problem with the open version is that the model can be distorted. When a given query is repeated hundreds of thousands of times in a specific way, the assistant can then be made to believe the information is correct and use it for later queries. And, with automation, repeating (deliberately incorrect) information 50 or 100 thousand times isn’t the slightest problem. So, that way, the data ChatGPT uses for generating answers can easily be skewed – and the answers will therefore be biased as well.
However, now businesses have one more option – creating a personalized, private instance of ChatGPT only for their own use.
What is a personalized ChatGPT instance?
A personal ChatGPT instance is an exclusive version of ChatGPT OpenAI language model dedicated solely to one user or organization.
You can think of it as something similar to an on-premises version of a software platform – the instance can be used only by your employees, no one else. This gives you far more control and security over the instance functionalities and data compared to using the publicly available version.
How else is the personalized instance different from the open version?
Working solely for your business is just one of the many differences between the personalized and public instances of ChatGPT.
The second significant difference is that a personalized ChatGPT instance has no permanent and unrestricted access to all the business data it is permitted to use.
Instead, after the user’s authorization, the AI-powered assistant only accesses the necessary data to answer the user’s questions. If a user asks for information beyond their access level, the assistant will politely respond that it doesn’t have that information. So, the AI does not make its own decisions about which questions to answer.
That makes a personalized instance a super secure solution that ensures users won’t be able to manipulate the assistant into answering questions they shouldn’t be asking.
➡️ Practical example
The financial director of a given company asks ChatGPT to generate financial reports for the company’s stakeholder meeting. After identifying the user as the org director and verifying that they are allowed to use financial data, the AI assistant will then quickly generate the report for them.
What if a regular employee asked ChatGPT to do the same task though? Then the assistant could see that this user doesn’t have access to the company’s financial data, and so the AI wouldn’t be able to use the data and answer the question either.
And what happens with the report once the financial director generates it for the incoming stakeholder meeting? Can anyone else (even from the same department) access the conversation?
No, because users are separated, and information does not flow between them. If another user requests ChatGPT to share confidential information, the customized version will not disclose any details as it doesn’t have access to it at that user’s level.
GPT-3.5 Turbo’s Fine-Tuned Capabilities
OpenAI’s latest update with GPT-3.5 Turbo offers an invaluable edge in personalization. Imagine having a tool that can be tailored to reflect the unique values, voice, and visions of your brand. This isn’t a mere proposal for the future; it’s here, now.
The recent advancements in fine-tuning GPT-3.5 Turbo are significant. As OpenAI explains, a fine-tuned version of GPT-3.5 Turbo can “match, or even outperform, base GPT-4-level capabilities on specific tasks.” Such benchmarks translate to tangible business results.
Furthermore, OpenAI ensures an uncompromising stance on data integrity. Your organization’s data remains just that—yours.
OpenAI
As with all our APIs, data sent in and out of the fine-tuning API is owned by the customer and is not used by OpenAI, or any other organization, to train other models.
Diving deeper, what does fine-tuning mean in practical terms?
- Enhanced Steerability: Direct the model to align with specific operational needs, whether concise communication or language-specific responses.
- Consistent Output: Consistent response formatting is important for apps that need a specific format. Fine-tuning can help convert user prompts into high-quality JSON snippets for use with their own systems.
- Brand Voice Fidelity: Your brand’s voice is its signature. Fine-tuning ensures this voice remains consistent across all interactions, solidifying brand identity.
- Operational Efficiency: The power to convey intent with shortened prompts without compromising on model performance streamlines operations and saves time.
As of now, fine-tuning is exclusive to OpenAI’s API, but we’re optimistic about bringing this feature to our personalized instance soon. The world of AI moves fast, and we’re right there with it to enhance your business.
Open ChatGPT vs Personalized Instance with Azure
| Open ChatGPT | Personalized Instance | |
| Accessibility | Accessible to the public | Exclusive to the organization |
| Data Privacy | Conversations stored publicly | Conversations remain private |
| Customization | Limited customization | Highly customizable |
| Data Training | Trained on public data | Can be fed with internal data and pre-prompts |
| Brand Alignment | Follows OpenAI’s branding | Can be tailored to organization’s branding |
| Security | Hosted on OpenAI’s servers | Hosted within Azure Cloud |
| Use Cases | General-purpose interactions | Tailored to specific organization needs* |
| Data Control | Limited control over data | Full control over data |
| Integration Possibilities | Standard integrations | Custom integrations possible |
The benefits of personalized instances
Personalized instances of ChatGPT aren’t just about enhanced security, although that is definitely one of its major strengths. A personalized instance can also give you a few other benefits:
The model cannot be contaminated
A personalized instance does not learn from the data we enter into it, so the model cannot be distorted.
Dominik Goss
CEO at Inwedo
ChatGPT in a private instance is like Dori the fish from “Finding Nemo”. The chat ends, and she forgets what it was all about. This is a very important element of a private instance that protects, e.g., from contaminating the model by repeatedly querying and suggesting things to it.
Each user has access to previously conducted conversations, but you can determine how long they will be stored. You can also specify during implementation that you do want to have someone like a super admin who will have access to ChatGPT history if you want to have more control over who and what questions are asked.
Personalized brand representation and tone
The default tone and style ChatGPT uses is, well, pretty robotic. Of course, you can ask it to respond in any other tone or style you wish, but then you need to specify how you want it to reply every single time. Plus, you might still feel that answer sounds somewhat unnatural.
Now imagine that you could tailor the AI model to produce responses perfectly matching your brand voice, or adhere to specific guidelines or policies. With a private instance that’s entirely possible, since you can customize the language model to respond in a way that best suits your business.
➡️ Practical example
Let’s say you are the owner of an e-learning language platform who wants to use the powers of AI to lessen teachers’ workloads. With the help of personalized ChatGPT, your teachers could:
- Prepare lessons on a given topic for different groups of students, as ChatGPT will automatically adjust the tone and style of the lessons. For example, it can create three different lesson exercise types, one being tailored to 7-year olds, the second for 13-year-olds, and the third for adults.
- Create study plans for students – by providing the assistant with study materials, examples of previously used process/structure descriptions, and any special requirements, ChatGPT can then generate a personalized study process plan for each student.
- Based on how previous lessons looked like and the script for the new lesson, it can prepare materials and exercises for the new lesson.
Of course, all those materials might need to be checked and corrected by the teachers before they can be used during lessons. Still, verifying the materials will take much less time than creating study plans or lessons themselves, giving the teachers more time to work with their students.
Improved performance and efficiency
MIT research found that white-collar workers who use ChatGPT are roughly 37% more efficient than those who do their work by hand. Just think about how even more efficient your business could become if the AI model was fed with your company’s internal knowledge. It’s essentially like you would have an additional senior employee who can onboard and train new employees or swiftly create monthly reports, as well as always having time to answer questions.
That makes generative AI an ideal assistant to humans during mentoring programs. Mentees don’t have to worry about bothering their mentors with endless questions, nor thinking that their questions might be stupid. The AI will answer any questions as many times as the mentees ask them without ever getting impatient, making them feel more at ease.
Mentors, meanwhile, won’t have to worry about not having enough time to answer all of their mentees’ questions. Rather than dozens of basic questions, they will mainly be asked more specific or unique ones that the assistant can’t answer. So the mentors will have more chances to show their experience to the mentees, and will also be more committed to answering any questions.
➡️ Practical example
A new employee has just joined your development team and they naturally feel a bit lost. They have plenty of questions, but asking new coworkers feels a bit awkward for them because they don’t really know anyone yet.
How could a personalized instance of ChatGPT make the first week easier for them?
- It can create and send personalized, interactive onboarding materials to the new hire based on their specific role and job responsibilities in the development team.
- Introduce the employee to the company’s policies, compliance requirements, and development process guidelines.
- Answer any questions the new hire might have about their position and share relevant materials with them, such as video tutorials or software manuals.
- Check their code, documents, or reports to ensure they fit the company’s requirements and are error free.
Dominik Goss
CEO at Inwedo
This approach significantly shortens the path to accessing vital information. Employees can directly engage with the assistant, posing questions or seeking guidance, and receive accurate and contextually appropriate responses. This streamlines the knowledge-sharing process and eliminates the need for time-consuming searches or potential misdirection.
Full compliance
The situation with public ChatGPT and data protection requirements is…complicated. Not only is the service regularly accused of violating intellectual property, but how the public instance works is also infringing on the majority of data protection regulations. So for industries with severe data handling and privacy regulations (like healthcare or finances), using the free version of ChatGPT is often strictly prohibited.
With the help of a personalized instance, however, those industries could still use the platform safely and with full compliance:
- The data inside ChatGPT can be secured in any way they need it (for example, by adding encryption).
- Companies will have full control over where their data is stored and who can access it.
- Connecting the AI model to an organization’s databases and document repositories can enhance its knowledge and accuracy in line with industry standards and the organization’s domain.
- Users of private instances are completely separated, ensuring that no one else can access or read the interactions between the user and the AI.
That way, using a private instance allows businesses to follow compliance requirements even while using the assistant, reducing the risk of falling out of compliance and incurring hefty fines.
Enhanced control over data handling
There’s one more advantage of having a dedicated ChatGPT instance working for you – you don’t have to worry that the platform will be unavailable when you need it.
As with any other top-rated online services, ChatGPT sometimes gets overwhelmed with requests and you might see an “Exceptionally high demand” message. If you are using the free, public version of the service, then all you can do is wait until the service becomes accessible again.
When using a personalized instance, on the other hand, you can forget about ever seeing that error again, as your organization and users will be the only people who can use the service.
Plus, you’ll have full control over the computational resources available to the model and be able to adjust them as needed. That means you can temporarily increase how much computational power ChatGPT can use during busy periods and then reduce it when your company no longer requires them.
➡️ Practical example
You need to create a report summary for a meeting with a client the next day. You could technically use the public instance to create the summary for you, but since the data inside the report is confidential, you can’t risk having the information leaking out. And besides, when you wanted to create a basic statistical report with the public ChatGPT service just now, you saw that the platform was at capacity and producing error messages when submitting queries.
When using a personalized instance instead, you can safely add the report into the service and then ask for the summary. The assistant will also be available at any time you may need it, since the number of people using it at the same time will be much lower.
Conclusion
Is ChatGPT going to replace most of the human workers, with how many tasks it can do and much faster than us? Not in the nearest future – it still needs someone who will give it a prompt (and check if the answer is correct). What it can do though is make our work far more efficient and enjoyable – but first, we need to learn how to use it to its full potential and how we can secure our business data while using it.
Dominik Goss
CEO at Inwedo
Using Generative AI already helps us focus on more important tasks and saves plenty of time, and we’ve only just started using this technology. It can give us more freedom and flexibility to manage our schedules, which can greatly improve our overall well-being. I truly believe this is a breakthrough in terms of improving productivity and quality of life.
Setting up a personalized ChatGPT is a step in the right direction. With it, you don’t have to worry about your sensitive data being stored, gathered, and used without your knowledge. The only ones with access to the data will be your employees – and no one else. How can you build and later enhance the AI assistant though?
That’s something with which we at Inwedo can help you out – so you could start taking advantage of the vast powers of ChatGPT without worrying about the safety of your data.
Discover how a personalized ChatGPT instance can help you grow your business
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