Panasonic leaks personal data of 334,000 people to external AI

Panasonic Operational Excellence announced that personal information belonging to approximately 334,000 individuals was uploaded to a prohibited external generative AI service. The incident occurred during a human resources information system implementation project conducted alongside its subsidiary, Panasonic Digital.

The compromised data includes details for approximately 75,000 current employees and 178,000 former employees, covering employee numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Additionally, the leak affects the personal information of approximately 55,000 family members of current employees and 26,000 family members of former employees.

Upon discovery, the involved members deleted the chat history and the relevant data from their business PCs. The company reported the incident to the Personal Information Protection Commission on September 29. While the AI provider confirmed that the data would not be used for model training because the learning function was disabled, the provider retains data for 30 days for safety and legal compliance purposes. Panasonic stated the data would no longer be held by the provider after October 25.