I think whats funny is that employees were most likely already covering the cost for these tools because they are useful. Companies didn't believe employees were using these tools and now have forced their usage and no longer have the costs subsidized.
Similarly companies seem to reward high token usage as a sign of someone willing to play ball with AI and again have forced higher costs on themselves for people reward hacking or using tokens out of spite.
There is no world where I can put my company’s data through an external site without their express consent and security sign off. I suspect at most companies there’s zero path for people to have been paying for it themselves.
An enormous percentage of America’s white collar work force has been doing this since 2023.
Fun fact, up until you face a consequence for crime, all crime is free! Have fun and go win the competition game against your co-workers.
None of the 5 places I have worked is this possible, but they are also all highly regulated industries. Firewalls block virtually everything by default.
Fair, but I assume everything on my work laptop is key logged. Surely they would notice Claude phoning home from my company laptop? I suspect a network rule to look for that traffic is trivial?
My employer doesn't specifically block this stuff, but does put up a warning when you visit it to review our AI usage policy. There isn't detection for using things in ways we shouldn't, but they have an audit trail and can review it if there is suspicion.
My guess is that at most companies, employees are prohibited from doing this, but not prevented.