TL;DR: The European Parliament has disabled AI features on lawmakers’ corporate devices, including tablets, after its IT department warned it could not guarantee data security. The temporary ban applies while officials assess exactly what information AI assistants share with cloud service providers.

Cloud Processing Concerns

According to Politico, Parliament staff were notified that AI features had been turned off because some assistants require cloud services to perform tasks like email summarisation. This means potentially sensitive data leaves the device — a problem for an institution handling confidential legislative work.

The Parliament’s tech support team stated: “As these features continue to evolve and become available on more devices, the full extent of data shared with service providers is still being assessed. Until this is fully clarified, it is considered safer to keep such features disabled.”

Day-to-day tools like calendar applications remain unaffected. The ban is temporary, pending a full assessment of data flows.

A Wider Pattern

The move reflects growing concern across organisations about AI data leakage. Studies have shown employees regularly share company secrets through AI assistants, and device vendors have been pushing on-device processing as a response to cloud security worries.

The Parliament’s guidance also advises lawmakers against granting third-party AI apps broad access to data — advice that applies equally to any organisation using AI tools.

This comes from the same institution that enacted the EU AI Act, the world’s first legislation designed to address risks from AI. The ban is less about AI technology itself and more about the basic question of where confidential data ends up during processing.

Looking Forward

For UK organisations, this is a practical reminder to audit what data their AI tools send to external servers. The European Parliament’s blanket approach may be cautious, but it highlights a gap many businesses have yet to address: understanding the full data flow of AI assistants integrated into everyday work devices. On-device AI processing is likely to become a more significant purchasing factor as these concerns grow.