Notion AI recently admitted that some conversation records between users and AI were taken away by hackers. What went wrong was not Notion’s own system, but Fireworks, the model inference service provider behind it.
Notion’s advice to users is very specific: If you have ever sent your account, password, key, etc. to its AI, change it now.
What this incident exposes is a chain that most people have not thought about. When you open the AI assistant in Notion, the question may not be answered by Notion. It may be transferred to a model hosting platform to run inference. The conversation passes through several companies along the chain, each a potential leak point. The user signed Notion’s privacy agreement, but what happened was a supplier they had never heard of.
There will only be more similar things in the future. Many SaaS products are now receiving third-party inference services, and some will switch between several based on cost. Ordinary users cannot see where their data goes.
There aren't many things that can be done, but one thing is very useful: don't paste content such as credentials, ID numbers, and customer privacy into any AI dialog box, even if it is a formal tool for company procurement. If you want AI to help you process documents with sensitive information, first manually code, or use a solution that supports local operation.
Notion has not announced the number of affected users or the time frame of the breach. Enterprise administrators can first go to the backend to check the usage records of the AI function, and temporarily turn it off if necessary.