Your employee's AI chat history is the new smoking gun

"Don't bring anything from [Dorsia] to Rumor. No code, no docs, no playbooks, no contact lists."

That's what an AI assistant allegedly told a senior engineer weeks before he left for a competitor. Bring "any architectural patterns, customer insights, or pricing intel," it allegedly added, and "you're toast."

He asked on his employer's account. The employer alleges he ignored the advice and did the exact opposite.

Dorsia, a members-only hospitality platform, sued Rumor Group and its new CTO, Chris Mathew, yesterday. The complaint alleges Mathew used a Claude account Dorsia paid for to ask how exposed he was under his contract, what he could take to Rumor, and how to avoid getting caught. 

Dorsia further alleges Rumor denied that Mathew had disclosed any Dorsia confidential information, then reversed course, placed him on leave, and announced it would terminate him, after Dorsia confronted it with his own AI prompts.

These are allegations, and Mathew and Rumor haven't answered. But the complaint is built on his own time-stamped prompts, from an account the company owned.

Not every employer can pull those chats. Many AI plans, especially personal and lower-tier business plans, give admins no view into employee conversations. Often only enterprise tiers offer audit logs or compliance exports. So what do you do if you're not on one, and how do you position your company for a case like this?

1. Check your plan today. Find out whether admins can see chats, export them, or search them. Don't learn the answer the day a key employee resigns.

2. Own the account. Buy a tier with admin access, tie it to work email, and ban personal accounts for work.

3. Require it in your policy. State that AI use for work is subject to review, that employees must preserve work-related chats, and that they must export and hand them over on request or on departure.

4. See around the chats. Web filters, browser logs, and data-loss tools show which AI sites people use, when, and what they upload. Company laptops can be forensically imaged.

5. Don't log in as the employee if you don't own the account. Using someone's password to read an account you don't control can create Stored Communications Act and computer-access problems. Ask for an export, or get it through forensics or discovery.

6. Act at resignation. When someone with access to code, pricing, or customers gives notice, image the device and request the export before accounts shut down. Then call counsel before you read anything.

Every litigator wants the smoking gun in the other side's own words. An employee's AI chats may be exactly that, but only if you can get to them before they disappear.