Employment tribunal refuses interim relief to manager who says he was fired for raising concerns about customer data sent to OpenAI; employer cites his AI use
A Head of Customer Service Platform at Apertum Online Ltd, a consumer internet company whose customer-service system passed customer request forms to a large language model, was dismissed on 11 March 2026 during his probation, two months after starting. According to an employment tribunal decision of 23 April 2026, he had told his manager in February that customers' personal data was being sent to OpenAI within support tickets and set out his concerns in a document; the chief technical officer called the document pure AI slop in a chat and said he would fire him. The employer says it dismissed him for underperformance, citing his reliance on AI to generate documents; he says he was dismissed for his disclosures. The judge refused interim relief, finding he had not shown a pretty good chance of success on the reason for dismissal while noting a significant coincidence in timing. No findings of fact were made, and the claim awaits a final hearing.
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 1 source · Added 22/10/2026