After the Data Protection Authority of the Italian government briefly banned ChatGPT on Friday and opened an investigation into the artificial intelligence programme’s alleged violation of privacy laws, OpenAI took ChatGPT offline in Italy.
The organization, also known as Garante, charged Microsoft-backed OpenAI with neglecting to verify the legal age of ChatGPT users, who are required to be 13 or older.
According to Garante, ChatGPT lacks “any legal basis that justifies the massive collection and storage of personal data” for the purpose of “training” the chatbot. OpenAI has 20 days to provide a remedy or face a fine of up to $21.68 million, which represents 4% of its yearly global revenue.
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT has been turned off for users in Italy at Garante’s request.
There could be no access to the page in Italy. The owner of the website may have put restrictions in place that prohibit users from accessing it, according to a notice on the ChatGPT webpage.
“We actively work to reduce personal data in training our AI systems like ChatGPT because we want our AI to learn about the world, not about private individuals,” according to a statement by OpenAI.
Italy is the first Western nation to take action against an AI-powered chatbot, and has temporarily restricted ChatGPT’s use of domestic users’ confidential data. Additionally, the robot is not accessible in some regions of Africa, Iran, Russia, Hong Kong, and mainland China where locals cannot open OpenAI accounts.
Since it was introduced last year, ChatGPT has sparked a tech craze, inspiring competitors to release comparable products and businesses to incorporate it or related technologies into their applications and goods.
Lawmakers in several nations have become interested in the technology’s quick growth. Because AI may have an effect on national security, employment, and education, many experts claim that new laws are required to regulate it.
“We expect all companies active in the EU to respect EU data protection rules. The enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation is the responsibility of EU data protection authorities”, said a spokesperson for the European Commission.
Margrethe Vestager, the executive vice president of the European Commission, tweeted that the Commission, which is considering the EU AI Act, may not be tempted to outlaw AI.
“No matter which #tech we use, we have to continue to advance our freedoms & protect our rights. That’s why we don’t regulate #AI technologies, we regulate the uses of #AI,” she said. “Let’s not throw away in a few years what has taken decades to build.”
In an open letter published on Wednesday, Elon Musk called for a six-month moratorium on the creation of systems that are more potent than OpenAI’s recently released GPT-4 and cited possible risks to society.
Information about how OpenAI develops its AI model is not publicly available.
The actual issue, according to AI researcher and associate professor Johanna Björklund of Ume University in Sweden, is a lack of transparency. “If you do AI research, you should be very transparent about how you do it,” the author advised.
A UBS research released last month estimated that ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after its debut, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history.
