Real estate agents edition
A judge says text in ChatGPT can lose its confidentiality, the AI bosses are hitting the brakes themselves, and Europe wants an invisible marker on AI text.
Judge: putting your client's data into ChatGPT counts as making it public
The Rotterdam court ruled that information you type into a public chatbot can lose its confidential status.
There is little news about your field itself this week. That is why this edition is shorter.
The investigating judge at the Rotterdam court made a ruling that reaches far beyond criminal law. In a criminal case, someone used ChatGPT to draft a reply meant for a person bound by professional confidentiality, such as a lawyer. The generated text also included that person's name. The investigating judge considers that entering confidential information into ChatGPT can count as making it public. Because of this, the information can lose its confidential status. The reasoning: an external AI system like ChatGPT stores both your input and the generated text, and can use it to train the model. For your profession, that's an uncomfortable mirror. You sometimes paste a valuation file, a purchase agreement, or an email exchange with a seller into a chatbot to quickly turn it into a neat text. This ruling is about exactly that. An estate agent or valuer has no legal right to withhold evidence like a lawyer does, but does have professional confidentiality towards clients and, for valuations, a file that must hold up under review. The ruling does not ban AI. It says that where you place your data has legal consequences. With an ordinary, public chatbot, your input goes to the servers of the company behind it. There it is stored and can be used to train the model further. Legally, you have then shared that information with a party outside the relationship of trust. That's different from a business environment where a contract states that input is not used for training. The tool itself isn't the problem, it's the settings and the contract behind it. The line lies at traceability: writing a property listing using only features is different from pasting a client file with names, addresses, and incomes. Remove that data before you enter anything, or use a business version where your administrator can show that input isn't kept for training. If you can't prove that, assume it happens anyway. This week, make a short house rule for your office about what may and may not go into a chatbot.
Background for subscribersThis edition has one common thread: what you type into a chatbot isn't automatically private. A judge says data can lose its confidentiality once you paste it into a public tool like ChatGPT. For you, that means: remove names, addresses, and amounts from texts before entering them, or use a business version that you know doesn't retain input. On top of that, the big AI companies are slowing down their own development, so don't expect leaps every quarter in your tools. And Europe is set to mark AI text invisibly, which means your own AI texts could become recognisable too. So let AI make the draft, but add the facts and tone yourself.
The AI bosses are hitting the brakes themselves
Sam Altman of OpenAI joined Anthropic boss Dario Amodei and Elon Musk this weekend. They are calling for a deliberate slowdown in developing powerful AI models, so people keep control. Altman wrote on X that no US competitive pressure should justify recklessness. He warned of two scenarios: people losing control to AI systems, and one company or person seizing power through AI. Amodei came up with a three-step plan, including independent overseers who can look in on major AI labs almost like staff members. The stock market reacted immediately: on Monday, SoftBank shares fell 13 percent in Tokyo, and Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped more than 4 percent in Seoul. For your work, the message is down to earth: don't expect a leap every quarter in the tools you use now. Pacing here means: deliberately releasing new, more powerful models more slowly, so safety checks can keep up. So the brake is on the next generation, not on what you use today. That also explains the stock market reaction: investors were counting on a continuous building wave of chips and data centres, and a pause hits exactly those companies. For an estate agency, this is mainly a planning question: do you choose tools based on what they can prove today, or on what the supplier promises for next year? This news argues for the former. This week, judge an AI subscription by what it delivers today, not by the roadmap.
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