What Is AI Security?
AI security is the set of practices and tools that protect data and systems when artificial intelligence is involved. For the hundreds of millions of people who use AI chatbots every day, the most immediate AI security risk is not a rogue model — it is data exposure. Anything you type into a prompt is transmitted to a third-party provider, where it may be stored, reviewed by humans, or used to train future models.
That makes prompt security the front line of AI security for individuals and teams. If sensitive information never leaves your device in the first place, no provider policy, breach, or retention window can expose it. This is exactly the gap PromptGnome closes.
What Is Prompt Security?
Prompt security is the discipline of inspecting and controlling the content of a prompt before it is sent to an AI model. In practice that means:
- Detecting personally identifiable information (PII) — names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, government IDs.
- Catching secrets — API keys, access tokens, passwords, and credentials pasted into code questions.
- Flagging confidential business data — client names, financials, unreleased plans.
- Warning the user, or automatically redacting the data, so the prompt is safe to send.
PromptGnome performs all of this locally. The check itself never sends your text anywhere — the security tool cannot become the leak.
Why a Browser Security Extension Is Now a Must-Have
The 2023 Samsung incident — engineers pasting proprietary source code into ChatGPT — showed how a single careless prompt can expose a company's crown jewels. The same risk applies to anyone debugging with real API keys, drafting an email with a client's details, or asking for help with a medical or legal document.
Browser-native protection is the right layer because the prompt is composed and sent in the browser. A security extension sits exactly where the data is, intercepts the outbound request, and applies prompt security with no change to how you work. That combination — right place, zero friction, local-first — is what makes PromptGnome a must-have extension rather than another setting you forget to turn on.
How PromptGnome Delivers AI Security
1. Intercept
PromptGnome hooks the outbound network request for each supported provider and extracts only the user-composed message text.
2. Detect locally
A regex engine scans for structured PII and secrets in under 10ms. In balanced mode, a local NER model adds names, organizations, and locations — all running in an offscreen document on your machine.
3. Warn or anonymize
If sensitive data is found, PromptGnome holds the request and shows a warning overlay. You can send anyway, or (Pro) auto-anonymize: PromptGnome replaces each value with a placeholder, sends the safe version, and re-hydrates the original values in the AI's reply so the conversation still reads naturally.
What a Must-Have AI Security Extension Should Do
| Capability | PromptGnome | Typical AI chatbot |
|---|---|---|
| Scans prompts before sending | Yes — every message | No |
| Runs detection locally | Yes — on device | N/A |
| Detects PII, keys & secrets | 20+ types | No |
| Works across providers | 8 chatbots | Single provider |
| Requires an account | No | Yes |
| Price | Free (Pro optional) | — |
Prompt Security for Every AI Provider
AI security is not one-size-fits-all — each provider stores and uses your data differently. PromptGnome ships a dedicated adapter and a privacy guide for each:
- ChatGPT security & privacy — OpenAI training data and the Samsung leak.
- Claude privacy — what Anthropic stores by default.
- Gemini privacy — Google ad targeting and cross-service sharing.
- Copilot privacy — Microsoft 365 integration exposure.
- DeepSeek, Perplexity, Grok, and Meta AI.
For deeper reading, see our guides on AI chatbot privacy risks, how to protect PII in AI tools, and API key leak prevention.