The Payment & Clearing Association of China, the self-regulatory organization of the payment and clearing industry, has called for industry participants to use ChatGPT with caution, warning the risk of cross-border data leakage has emerged.

"The risks of using ChatGPT and other tools to process work content should be comprehensively assessed. ChatGPT and other tools should be used in compliance with laws and regulations," the association said in a statement published on its official WeChat account on Monday.

The move is the first by a self-regulatory body in China's financial sector to publicly call for restraint when using ChatGPT, joining regulators in a rising number of economies who are paying attention to data security issues regarding ChatGPT.

Participants in the payment industry should not upload any key, sensitive information to ChatGPT, the association said. Such information includes confidential documents and data of the country and the financial industry, corporate non-public materials and data, customer information and core codes of the payment and settlement infrastructure.