SDCC is slammed over use of AI with personal information

SOUTH Dublin County Council has come under fire from Councillor Daniel Loftus following the publication of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy, stating, “the government should properly fund the council instead of relying on AI to fill in the gaps.”

Cllr Loftus made these comments after having received a response to a question he raised at the July Council Meeting, which asked for the SDCC’s exact reason for using AI.

SDCC confirmed that it permits the use of approved AI tools where there is a legitimate business need, with its “only approved generative AI platform for staff use” being Microsoft Copilot.

This platform is provided “under a paid enterprise licence and is subject to strict governance, security and management controls,” according to the SDCC response.

Microsoft Copilot may be of assistance to the council in drafting and research activities, including the preparation of responses to elected officials, as stated by SDCC.

“In all cases, the responsibility for the content of any response remains with the relevant Council officer, and all outputs are subject to human review, verification and approval before issue.”

Cllr Loftus questioned the use of personal information by Copilot, as personal data is submitted when making a representation to the council on behalf of a member of the public.

“I submitted an additional representation to the council questioning whether this personal information is presented to Microsoft Copilot by council staff. The council confirmed

‘there is no blanket prohibition on the use of personal data within approved AI systems’,” Cllr Loftus said.

Following further queries from Cllr Loftus, Copilot stated that data is retained within the system but is not used for foundation-model training

“unless you explicitly allow it”.

Cllr Loftus went on to highlight the recent breaches from OpenAI, which saw an AI system caused 17,000 hacking actions without human direction.

These incidents have prompted further questions about the use of personal data, including Cllr Loftus who said, “I personally do not feel comfortable with the council feeding my personal information to any AI model.”

“I completely understand that the council staff are facing a large amount of work and cases to respond to and this AI model may help them clear their case load quicker.

“Fundamentally I do not believe this benefit outweighs the risk of a breach of people’s personal information, and the government should properly fund the council instead of relying on AI to fill in the gaps.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.