Panasonic employee improperly uploaded colleagues' and family members' information to an external GenAI service, affecting approximately 334,000 people
Panasonic Excellence Operations (PEX) announced that an employee responsible for a human resources information system project violated the rules by uploading data on current employees, former employees, and family members to a prohibited external generative AI service platform, affecting approximately 334,000 people in total. The data involved includes employee numbers, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and emergency contact information. The GenAI service provider stated that the data was not incorporated into its training database, that data retained in accordance with compliance requirements will be deleted on October 25, and that no data breach has occurred so far.
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The incident provides a complete account of the number of affected individuals and the types of data, offering insight into the scale of risk associated with employees' improper use of external GenAI services at enterprises.
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Panasonic Employee Improperly Uploads Colleague and Family Member Information to GenAI Service, Affecting 334,000 People
2026-10-26 16:22 IT Home - Su Bo (Intern)
IT Home, October 26 news: Panasonic Excellence Operations (PEX) issued a notice on the 23rd of this month, local time in Japan, announcing and apologizing to affected parties regarding an information improper-upload incident that occurred in the human resources information system project jointly carried out with its subsidiary Panasonic Digital.
According to the notice, an employee responsible for the human resources information system project violated established rules by uploading data including current employees, former employees, and employees' family members to an external generative artificial intelligence service platform whose use is prohibited.
This incident affects 75,000 current employees, 178,000 former employees, 55,000 current employees' family members, and 26,000 former employees' family members who use the Panasonic Group's unified human resources information system, totaling approximately 334,000 people. The data involved includes current/former employee IDs, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, as well as the names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of family members serving as emergency contacts.
After this incident occurred, the employee who caused the accident deleted the generative AI chat records and the relevant data on the computer used for work. The GenAI service provider stated that these data were not included in the training database, and data retained in accordance with compliance requirements will also be deleted on October 25. At present, no leakage of this batch of data has occurred.