How often does someone reach out to you at work, but they send the message in another language?

Maybe it came from a customer, coworker, vendor, doctor, attorney, or someone you know personally. Since you don’t understand it, perhaps you decide to copy the entire message, paste it into an AI chatbot, and tell it: “Translate this into English.”

Problem solved! Except—you may have just shared far more information than you realized, with a third party that you wouldn’t want to have that information.

AI translation is incredibly useful, but the same rules that apply when sharing information with AI still apply when you use it to translate messages. After all, the AI has to receive the sensitive information before it can translate its meaning.

Translation Does Not Make the Information Less Sensitive

Consider what information could appear in an ordinary email: Names, phone numbers, account information, medical details, financial information, customer records, contract terms, and internal company information.

A message does not become harmless simply because it’s written in French, Portuguese, Mandarin, or another language that you don’t speak.

If you would hesitate to paste the English version into an AI tool, you should probably hesitate before pasting the original version, too.

Now, that sounds obvious when you say it out loud. When you’re at work and just need a quick translation, however, it’s surprisingly easy to forget simple cyber-hygiene techniques.

Information May Not Even Belong to You

Now, using AI to translate messages presents another issue. Suppose someone sends you an email describing a private medical issue, and then you paste it into an AI chatbot so you can understand what the person said.

You are not only sharing your information with AI. You are also sharing the sender’s.

The same problem can occur when you translate customer emails, legal documents, employee information, resumes, invoices, support tickets, contracts, and private messages through artificial intelligence.

Even if you personally don’t mind using AI, the other person may have no idea that you submitted their information to a third-party platform. They have the right to device what happens to their private information just like you do, and getting their consent matters.

How Screenshots Can Put Data at Risk, Too

AI tools can increasingly allow you to upload an image and it can read the text on that .JPG (or .PNG) picture. That capability makes translating signs, documents, emails, and text messages incredibly convenient!

Unfortunately, it can also expose other information that you didn’t even need to translate.

Imagine uploading a screenshot of a conversation so that AI can translate three lines that you need interpreted. The screenshot also contains the person’s name, profile picture, phone number, previous messages, time stamps, and even notifications from other apps.

AI can analyze all of it.

The same problem occurs when photographing a physical document. The page may contain names, addresses, signatures, account numbers, QR codes, barcodes, or information in the margins. Before uploading an image to AI, look at the entire image, not just the part you want help with.

Work Information Deserves Extra Caution

This becomes especially important at work. Your organization may have rules governing which AI services employees can use and what information you can submit to them.

Those rules still apply when you translate a message.

A customer database doesn’t stop needing protection just because some of the information is in German. Confidential contracts still require vigilance and protection even if you can’t read the sections written in Spanish. Protected health information does not become less sensitive because it needs translation.

If your organization provides an approved AI or translation service, then use it! If you don’t know whether you can upload information, then ask before you do.

You Usually Do Not Need to Share Everything

The good news is that you can often use AI translation without providing the entire document or conversation.

Suppose you receive this message:

Hi Jennifer, I am contacting you about account 58329. My home address is 123 Main Street, and my phone number is 555-123-4567. I need help understanding the charge on my account…

If you only need help understanding one sentence later in the message, AI probably does not need Jennifer’s name, account number, address, phone number, and the entire conversation.

Before you paste it into the AI, first remove any unnecessary information.

You can replace sensitive details with generic descriptions like…

  • [CUSTOMER NAME]
  • [ACCOUNT NUMBER]
  • [COMPANY NAME]
  • [ADDRESS]

Then, only submit the portion of the message that you actually need translated. You can still get a useful interpretation without giving the AI the complete story.

Protecting Your Translated Documents

Confidential documents deserve even more scrutiny than simple, copy-and-paste messages.

Before uploading a PDF, Word document, spreadsheet, or photograph, ask yourself what else that file contains. Even though you may only care about one paragraph, the document could contain 20 pages of unnecessarily sensitive details.

Instead, extract the specific section you need, remove identifying information when possible, and feed the AI only the portion of text that you need.

A little extra effort can dramatically reduce what you expose.

Treat Translation Like Any Other AI Request

AI makes language barriers much easier to overcome. That development genuinely helps ease global communications and cooperative workflows.

Just don’t let the simplicity of the task fool you. Whether you ask AI to summarize information, rewrite it, analyze it, or translate it, the first step is still the same: You are giving the AI access to that information.

Before you hit Enter, take five seconds and look at what you are actually sharing. Remove names you do not need, crop screenshots, and delete account numbers and identifying details.

Use your organization’s approved tools for work information. Most importantly, remember that someone else’s private information deserves the same protection you would want for your own.

AI may only need one sentence to help you, so don’t give it the entire conversation.