Sweden's Government Offices Block ChatGPT and Claude, Keep Microsoft Copilot

Sweden's Government Offices—the administrative body supporting the prime minister and cabinet—will block ChatGPT and Claude on staff computers from Monday, directing civil servants to Microsoft's Copilot as the only approved AI tool, according to Sweden’s national, publicly funded radio broadcaster Sveriges Radio.

The reasoning comes from Mikael Wettercrantz, the Government Offices' director of digitalisation, who posted on the staff intranet that using AI services without a formal contract can have "consequences for our information security."

“We have seen several examples of problematic use of open AI services. The examples concern both the sensitivity of the information that has been entered and how the AI-generated responses have been handled,” he said.

Consumer AI tools without formal agreements send user queries to external company servers—and U.S. law allows authorities to compel those companies to hand over data on request.

A formal security agreement, at minimum, defines what the provider can and cannot do with government employees' inputs, which is why the distinction between a vetted enterprise contract and an open consumer tool matters here.

Copilot passes because the Government Offices reviewed it and raised its security settings after the review—something it did not do for ChatGPT or Claude. Some employees can still access both blocked tools through an AI platform the Government Offices built internally, though the press office hasn't said how many people that covers or what restrictions apply.

Sweden's Tax Agency and the National Board of Institutional Care have already imposed similar bans on consumer AI tools. The Enforcement Authority—the agency responsible for debt collection and enforcing court orders—is preparing a decision of its own. An internal audit at the Transport Administration separately found roughly 10 AI services being used there in a "widespread and risky way."

The European Parliament went further in February, disabling AI features across all its work devices—ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot included—after concluding it could not guarantee the security of data those tools processed.

European government concerns about AI data security have been building since Italy's ChatGPT ban in 2023. Sweden is now drawing a narrower line than Brussels, sanctioning one U.S. tech company's product while shutting out two others.

Microsoft incorporated Claude models into Copilot in early 2026. In the EU—where Sweden sits—Anthropic's models default to off and require administrators to deliberately enable them.

Sweden's Government Offices has not confirmed whether its Copilot instance has Claude switched on, which means the distinction between the "banned" AI and the "approved" one is not as clean as the announcement implies.