To keep pace with the demands of employers and the labour market, we connect AI to emails, calendars, documents and other services in pursuit of greater productivity. We gradually give it an increasingly accurate picture of our professional and personal lives. We do not have to reject AI. But we do need to understand which doors we are opening to it.
From convenience to a workplace necessity
The rise of social media and the almost simultaneous advent of smartphones revolutionised how we handle our privacy twenty years ago. Artificial intelligence has now put an entirely new “spin” on this revolution. Giving technology access to our “personalities” on Instagram or TikTok is no longer a leisure activity, but to a large extent a professional necessity.
A colleague can produce more drafts in the same amount of time, process source materials faster and respond to dozens of messages. Companies expect greater productivity, clients demand shorter deadlines, and people who do not use AI may feel that they are falling behind. For most people, therefore, the dilemma is no longer whether to use AI.
Artificial intelligence gains quality, while we gain addiction
At first, it was just questions entered into ChatGPT or Claude. A year later, we are connecting AI models to work emails, storage platforms, calendars, notes, meeting transcripts, graphic design applications, CRM systems and internal databases. The more useful a tool becomes, the more information and permissions it usually needs from us.
Most professionals who want to remain relevant in their field in the years ahead are therefore not asking whether to use AI, but how to use it without gradually handing over control of their entire digital lives.
When AI fails, it can reveal everything about us
People interact with AI differently from ordinary software. Conversations conducted through prompts create the impression of a private exchange. Suddenly, it no longer feels difficult to talk about work problems, health, relationships, and even intimate secrets that you would never share in a public form. It is important to understand that protecting this information depends not only on the AI model itself, but also on the application and its operator.
In 2025, an unsecured server used by the Chattee Chat and GiMe Chat apps exposed more than 43 million private messages and over 600,000 photos and videos belonging to approximately 400,000 users. IP addresses, device identifiers, authentication tokens, and purchase records were leaked. The server transmitted data in real time, and anyone who knew the relevant address could access its contents. It was not necessarily the AI model that failed, but the application built around it and the basic safeguards protecting its infrastructure.
AI builds a much more accurate picture of us
AI that works with our messages, documents and task history gradually creates a detailed digital mirror of an individual or an entire organisation. The model may know our working habits, clients, projects, deadlines, financial information, communication style and the problems we are currently trying to solve. Individual pieces of information may not appear dangerous. When combined, however, they create an exceptionally valuable and sensitive profile.
“AI service providers may gain an even broader and deeper insight into their users than traditional mobile operating system providers. It is therefore critical to consider which service we trust, what data we give it and what guarantees we have regarding its protection,” warns Pavol Draxlera cybersecurity expert at Binary Confidence.
The first risk is losing control over the content we enter into AI. People use it to summarise contracts, review source code, rewrite internal presentations or analyse financial spreadsheets. They may not know where this data is stored, how long it is retained, who can access it or whether it is used to improve the model. Information that appears harmless today may still be sensitive several years from now.
Every connected service raises the stakes
The second problem involves integrations and access permissions. When connecting AI to an email account or cloud drive, we do not usually give the tool our password directly. We do, however, grant it an access token that may allow it to read messages, search documents or perform tasks on our behalf. If a service has more permissions than it actually needs, a potential security incident can have a much greater impact.
AI also introduces new forms of attack. A malicious instruction may be hidden in an email, document or website. A tool that processes such content may be manipulated by it. An attacker could therefore try to make the AI bypass its rules, retrieve sensitive information or perform an unwanted action in a connected system. This type of manipulation is known as prompt injection.
Large, well-known platforms are not the only source of risk. Various AI browser extensions, meeting bots, unofficial add-ons and services that merely wrap another provider’s model can be even less transparent. Users often do not know how many additional companies can access their data or who they have actually granted access to their microphone, open webpages or work documents.
You do not have to reject AI. You just need to set boundaries
Not using AI is not a realistic solution for most people. It can save a significant amount of time and is becoming a standard part of work in many professions. “Meaningful protection is not about rejecting the technology, but about consciously deciding where we use it, what data we give it and which identity we connect to it,” says Pavol Draxler, a cybersecurity expert at Binary Confidence.
Companies should provide employees with approved enterprise tools governed by clear data-processing rules. If people are not given a secure alternative, they are likely to start completing work tasks through their own free personal accounts. This creates “shadow AI”, technology used outside the organisation’s control.
For more sensitive data, enterprise environments, private clouds, VPCs, or internally operated models may offer a solution. On-device models that process information directly on the device without sending everything to a third party will also become increasingly accessible.
A practical checklist for using AI more safely:
- Do not enter passwords, API keys, national identification numbers, health data, complete contracts or confidential company documents into public AI tools.
- Before submitting data, remove names, contact details, client names and other identifiers.
- For work-related tasks, use a company account and approved enterprise tools rather than a free personal account.
- Check whether the provider uses inputs for training, how long it retains them and whether they can be deleted.
- Grant integrations only the permissions they genuinely need. If read-only access is sufficient, do not allow writing, sending or deleting.
- Regularly review which services have access to your email, calendar and cloud storage. Revoke connections you no longer use.
- Protect accounts with passkeys, security keys, a reliable password manager and multi-factor authentication.
- Keep your work and personal contexts separate, and disable unnecessary history or memory when handling sensitive tasks.
- Always require human confirmation before sending a message, changing a document, making a purchase or payment, or taking action in a production system.
The simplest rule is to treat AI like an external collaborator. It should receive only the data and permissions it needs for a specific task, work under appropriate supervision and be easy to disconnect immediately. AI can be an excellent assistant. But it does not automatically need a master key to our entire digital lives.
This activity is supported by the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC) as part of the project under grant code 101145856, and by the Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatization as part of the state programme of the Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Slovak Republic under project grant code 17I04-04-V02-00001.
