Chinese AI firm Z.ai faces reputation hit after users spot unauthorised uploads

Chinese artificial intelligence company Z.ai is facing a trust crisis after developers discovered that its coding assistant tool, ZCode, was silently uploading local workspace data to external servers without explicit user consent.

Even though the company, also known as Zhipu AI, apologised and patched the vulnerability, developers said the incident was likely to weaken its reputation, especially at a time when cybersecurity is becoming a central issue in the AI industry.

The issue came to light...