According to Politico, the acting head of the US cybersecurity agency CISA uploaded confidential contract documents marked “for official use only” to ChatGPT.
Citing officials, the outlet reported on Tuesday that Madhu Gotumkara, the Trump-appointed acting director of CISA, had triggered multiple automated security alerts to prevent theft or inadvertent disclosure of government files from federal networks.
Early in his tenure as CISA Director, Gottumukkala was reportedly granted an exception to use ChatGPT at a time when other employees were prohibited. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which has jurisdiction over CISA, sought to determine whether there was any harm to government security as a result of his uploads.
Uploading unclassified but internal government documents to public versions of large language models is problematic. This is because it allows the model to train itself based on that information, and that content may be shared with others who use it.
A CISA spokesperson told Politico that Gottumukkala's use of ChatGPT was “short-term and limited.”
Prior to his appointment to CISA, Gottumukkala served as South Dakota's chief information officer under then-Governor Kristi Noem. After his appointment to CISA, Gottumukkala reportedly failed a counterintelligence polygraph test, which the Department of Homeland Security later claimed was “unauthorized” and subsequently suspended six career employees from accessing classified information.