I asked a Northland CEO how much he was paying for ChatGPT. “Nothing – it’s the free one.” That’s when I knew he had a problem.
He’d been proudly running every customer contract through it to review them. Saving hours, loving it. Fair enough – it’s a brilliant tool.
But there’s an old rule that still holds. If you don’t pay for the product – you’re the product.
Where the contracts went
On the free version, whatever you paste in can be used to train the model. So every contract – client names, prices, the confidential bits – had left his business and landed in a system he doesn’t own and can’t pull back.
No hacker. No breach. He handed it over himself, chuffed to be saving a few bucks.
Keep using AI, just use the right version
I’m not telling anyone to stop using AI. Use a paid business version where your data stays yours & isn’t fed into training, and give your team a simple rule on what’s safe to paste.
Doing something clever with AI? Just check which version you’re on first. And if it bills by usage, like Copilot Cowork, set a spending cap from day one.
Happy to show you what safe looks like – see how we help businesses use AI or give us a shout.