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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesWhether an AI service is free does not determine how severe a security incident is. Severity should be based on validated impact and your organization’s response criteria. The service tier matters for a different decision: whether the specific service, account, settings, and terms are appropriate for the information you plan to submit.
What determines incident severity?
Classify an incident by what happened and how it affects people and systems—not by whether an AI assistant helped investigate it or whether that assistant was free to use. Relevant facts include which assets and people are affected, whether sensitive information was exposed, the effect on integrity and availability, the incident’s scope and duration, and the escalation thresholds in your organization’s response policy.
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NIST’s SP 800-61 Rev. 3, published in April 2025, integrates incident-response recommendations into cybersecurity risk management under CSF 2.0. It is guidance for organizations, not a universal severity formula. An initial preliminary draft of NIST’s AI Cybersecurity Framework Profile gives examples such as model-integrity impact, the quantity of exposed sensitive data, and duration of availability loss; those examples are not a finalized scoring system. Read the preliminary draft.
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Use an AI assistant, if approved, to help organize facts or draft questions—not as the sole authority assigning severity. Validate its output against evidence and your established escalation criteria.
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Can you use a free AI chatbot during incident response?
Possibly, but “free” alone cannot answer whether a service is appropriate. Consumer and business products can differ, and provider terms and account settings may change. Training or model-improvement use, retention, human review, abuse monitoring, access controls, deletion, and contractual commitments are separate data-handling questions—not a single private/not-private switch.
For example, OpenAI says that inputs and outputs from its named business and API offerings—including ChatGPT Enterprise, Business, Edu, Healthcare, Teachers, and its API platform—are not used for model training or improvement by default; it also says qualifying organizations can configure retention, including zero data retention for the API. Those statements apply to the offerings named on its business-data page; they do not automatically describe a consumer or free product.
Anthropic provides separate consumer-product guidance for services including Claude Free, Pro, and Max, and distinguishes these from commercial offerings. Its pages discuss retention and model-improvement practices and settings; check the current terms and the actual account settings for the service you use: retention and model improvement. These provider examples illustrate why the exact product and account matter; they do not support a ranking of providers or a general claim about every free service.
What to check before submitting incident evidence
- Identify the exact service. Record the product, account type, model or service pathway, applicable terms, and settings. Do not infer safeguards from a provider’s name or subscription label.
- Classify the material. Incident notes may contain personal information, credentials, customer records, unreleased vulnerability details, or regulated or otherwise sensitive data.
- Review the distinct data-handling controls. Check current rules for training or model improvement, retention and deletion, human review, abuse monitoring, access controls, and any organizational, enterprise, or API safeguards. Confirm which protections actually apply to your account.
- Follow internal policy. If the workflow or data class is not authorized, do not paste raw evidence. Use an approved tool or provide a properly minimized and redacted description. NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework is voluntary guidance for managing AI risks; it is not a substitute for your organization’s policy. NIST says the framework is being revised and notes that its Generative AI Profile was released on July 26, 2024.
- Assess and escalate the incident on its facts. Apply your organization’s thresholds to validated impact, then document the rationale and notify the relevant stakeholders as required. Keep the decision about tool suitability separate from severity classification.
Which guidance applies—and what does not follow from it?
- NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3: incident-response recommendations integrated with CSF 2.0 risk management. NIST describes its purpose as helping organizations incorporate response recommendations throughout cybersecurity risk-management activities. It does not make free AI use a severity category. Publication page.
- NIST AI security and resilience: a discussion of AI trustworthiness, confidentiality, integrity, availability, and AI-specific attack surfaces. NIST notes that the field is changing rapidly. NIST overview.
- OWASP AIVSS v0.8: a framework for assessing and prioritizing AI vulnerabilities, including response decisions. Vulnerability prioritization can inform triage, but a vulnerability score is not automatically an incident severity rating and does not replace organizational policy. OWASP AIVSS.
- NIST SP 800-63-4: within the specific scope of identity systems, it says organizations using AI/ML systems in those systems shall perform and document privacy risk assessments for personal information processed by them. That requirement should not be generalized to every AI workflow. NIST publication.
When should an AI-related event be reported outside your organization?
Follow the legal, regulatory, contractual, and internal reporting obligations that actually apply to the incident and your organization. CISA’s JCDC AI Cybersecurity Collaboration Playbook offers voluntary processes for sharing information about AI-related cybersecurity incidents and vulnerabilities. CISA’s January 14, 2025 announcement does not mean every organization must report every AI event to CISA. Read the announcement.
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