The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has warned Nigerians against sharing sensitive personal information, including National Identification Numbers (NIN), Bank Verification Numbers (BVN), bank details, photographs and medical records on artificial intelligence platforms.
The agency issued the warning in an advisory titled “Advisory on the Safe Use of AI Platforms,” published on its website on Monday.
NITDA said the growing use of AI chatbots and assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Meta AI for academic work, business, job applications, health-related questions and personal matters had increased the need for caution when handling sensitive information.
The agency warned that information entered or uploaded on AI platforms could potentially be retained, logged or used by service providers to improve or train their AI models.
It cautioned that personal information shared on such platforms could also be exposed through data breaches and potentially used for identity theft, impersonation or financial fraud.
NITDA therefore advised users to remove, anonymise or pseudonymise personally identifiable and sensitive information before submitting prompts or documents to AI tools.
The agency also urged users to review the privacy and data-handling policies of AI platforms before using them and warned against uploading internal or confidential documents without proper authorisation.
NITDA further cautioned that AI-generated responses could appear convincing while being inaccurate, incomplete or outdated.
It said relying on such information in sensitive areas such as healthcare, legal matters, financial decisions or academic work could result in serious consequences.
The agency advised organisations to establish AI governance or AI transformation policies that clearly define approved AI tools, permitted uses, data-handling requirements and accountability for their use.
It also urged organisations and employees to comply with existing artificial intelligence, information security and data protection policies.
In a related message shared on its X account, NITDA reinforced the warning, urging users to be particularly careful about the information they provide to AI platforms.
“Many share NIN, BVN, bank info, photos & medical results not knowing it may be stored outside your control,” the agency said.
NITDA advised users to avoid sharing sensitive data with AI platforms, anonymise prompts where necessary and verify AI-generated information before relying on it.
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