Dear privacy pros,

For our members who celebrate the Lunar New Year, I wish you an abundance of health, prosperity and success in the Year of the Rabbit. 龙马精神, 大吉大利, 步步高升! For those who do not, may you nevertheless have a wonderful reunion with your loved ones over the holiday break this weekend.

A lot of attention in the press recently has focused on ChatGPT, another product from OpenAI’s groundbreaking research into artificial intelligence, following DALL-E 2. In its own words, ChatGPT is a "conversational language model … based on the GPT (Generative Pre-training Transformer) architecture, which is a type of neural network designed for natural language processing tasks such as language translation, text summarization, and question answering. ChatGPT uses a large dataset of text to learn patterns and relationships in language. It can then use this knowledge to generate human-like responses to text input, such as a question or a prompt."

While most articles thus far have focused on the potential use of ChatGPT by students writing essays and cheating in exams, it is clear the potential repercussions of this new technology (or, rather, step improvement over previous chatbots) go well beyond this. For example, a research paper recently released by Check Point highlights potential use cases where ChatGPT may be used by cybercriminals to supplement or augment their code-writing capabilities to create complex scripts for malware and ransomware tools.

ChatGPT itself (it just seems natural to anthropomorphize such a technology) seems cognizant of the potential for abuse, and highlighted that threat actors may also use the technology to “generate convincing phishing emails or social media posts” to trick unwitting users into clicking on malicious links. Think about the possibilities if we combine ChatGPT’s natural language processing ability with DALL.E 2’s ability to produce ultra-realistic “deep fakes!”

While we are not quite there yet, I imagine companies will have to start paying attention to developments in this area. We may be on the cusp of what could turn out to be an “arms race” to leverage AI in both attacking and defending cybersecurity moats that companies have put up. The onus is also likely to be placed on companies like OpenAI to put in adequate safeguards to prevent their technology from being exploited for nefarious purposes. At the very least, I can confirm that it is not possible to ask ChatGPT to give you Bill Gates' telephone number!

On the bright side, it appears that most claims regarding ChatGPT’s ability to put professionals out of a job are grossly exaggerated. Having quizzed ChatGPT on certain topics relating to Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act, China’s Personal Information Protection Law and Indonesia’s Data Protection Law, I am convinced that privacy professionals still have a bright future ahead.

And on that auspicious note, I wish you happy reading.