Singapore Sees First Data Breach Linked to AI Use, ST Reports

Singapore received its first notification of an AI-related data breach after a food company accidentally disclosed customers’ email addresses to other recipients of a bulk email, the Straits Times reported, citing the country’s Personal Data Protection Commission.

Bee Cheng Hiang, a well-known local producer of Chinese-style pork jerky, told the commission the incident occurred in April after an employee used a generative AI tool to create a program for sending emails in batches to a local mailing list. The employee, however, failed to instruct the program to hide each recipient’s email address from other customers. It was the first time the company had used an AI tool in its business operations, the newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The breach, which was reported to the commission two days after the incident, exposed the email addresses of more than 95,000 customers. No other personal data was affected, and the exposed information wasn’t managed, processed or generated by any AI-powered operation or process, the commission told the Straits Times.

Bee Cheng Hiang has since introduced a requirement for at least two staff members to verify all bulk email communications before they are sent, the newspaper reported.