James Pooley, an independent attorney in San Francisco, says people don’t fully understand the capabilities of the technology yet.

But he points out that this is by no means the first time that businesses have had to consider new technologies when refining their trade secrets strategies.

“When I first started out, there were no networks or internet. The only thing you needed to do to make sure your information was protected was watch who walked out the front door and guard the photocopier. The environment since then has changed dramatically,” Pooley notes.

He adds that there are now almost “infinite” ways for employees and others trusted with confidential details to communicate them externally.

“To the extent that generative AI encourages more communication, I suppose you might say it presents another dimension of risk for control over company data. But it’s not at the same scale as some of the changes we’ve seen in the past.”