Shadow AI refers to the unauthorized or unmonitored use of AI tools (like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, and Gemini) by employees in the workplace. It’s now one of the fastest-growing data exfiltration vectors. Employees are pasting source code, customer or patient data, contract terms, and even M&A info into gen AI tools, often without realizing the risk. And many legacy DLP tools are still catching up.