April 3, 2023
The Italian government’s Data Protection Management, Garante, has begun investigating ChatGPT’s services in Italy, resulting in ChatGPT’s operations being temporarily halted on Italian soil.
Garante alleges that ChatGPT has no legal basis for collecting and maintaining personal data in order to train the chatbot. The agency ordered OpenAI 20 days to respond or risk a punishment of up to €20 million ($21.68 million), or 4% of its annual global sales. After that, OpenAI deactivated ChatGPT for Italian users.
Those wanting to access ChatGPT in Italy are now unable to do so since the website is down. The site’s warning implies that the site’s owner may have implemented restrictions to prevent visitors from viewing it.
OpenAI has stated that it purposely limits the amount of personal data used to train its AI systems, such as ChatGPT, since it wants its AI to understand the world rather than individuals.
Garante has stated that it will not only ban OpenAI’s chatbot, but will also investigate whether it complied with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The GDPR governs the collection, use, and storage of personal data. The regulatory agency revealed on March 20 that the app had been vulnerable to a data breach involving user communications and payment information. It also decided that the substantial gathering and storage of personal data to train the platform’s algorithms lacked legal justification.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.
