ChatGPT banned in Italy over data privacy concerns

The AI chatbot ChatGPT has been temporarily banned by Italy's privacy regulator after it was determined that it had inappropriately acquired and stored information. This has caused policymakers to move faster to implement new AI regulations.

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As part of the order, OpenAI is required to suspend the processing of data from Italian users, which could effectively mean that OpenAI must block access to its chatbot from Italian users. As of Friday afternoon, the platform was still accessible.

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This is one of the first measures to be taken at the national level by a government to restrict the use of ChatGPT since its popularity has exploded globally in recent months. There have been increasing calls for regulation of the self-generated AI tool in the U.S., as well as in Europe, over a variety of concerns ranging from data protection to disinformation to job safety to the issue of job displacement.

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As per the data protection authority in Italy, OpenAI "didn't have a legal basis" for using the data it had gathered, and the data was solely for the purpose of "training algorithms that run on the platform.”

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A comment request from OpenAI was not immediately responded to. 

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It has been reported that the US Federal Trade Commission has opened an inquiry into OpenAI and has given the company a deadline of 20 days to show what steps it has taken to comply with the privacy rules of the European Union or risk being fined. There is a maximum fine of 4% of a company's global annual revenue or the equivalent of $21.8 million, whichever is greater, under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. 

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The Italian regulatory body added that there was no system in place to check users' ages and prevent anyone under the age of 13 from using the chatbot, subjecting them to "responses that are utterly unsuited to their degree of development and self-awareness."

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OpenAI could have to comply with the regulator's demands by adding age checks to its products, updating its privacy policies, and informing users of how their personal information might be used in more detail in order to comply with regulator requests.

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OpenAI could face a complicated dispute if the regulator demands that OpenAI take steps to exclude or remove information about identifiable individuals in Italy from its training data, or that individuals have the opportunity to object to their inclusion since tools such as ChatGPT have been trained on billions of documents from the Internet.  

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There is a growing level of scrutiny over AI tools and chatbots in particular. A group of AI researchers and tech executives called on the industry earlier this week to impose a six-month moratorium on the training of the next generation of AI tools in order to give the industry plenty of time to set safety standards for the new technology.

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Moreover, news publishers have begun to examine the extent to which their content is being used for training tools like ChatGPT, and whether they have any legal rights in relation to being compensated for these uses, according to a report by Trade Algo.

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AI is also attracting the attention of regulators who are looking closely at the technology. It is expected that the EU's upcoming debate on a bill that would regulate the use of artificial intelligence across the bloc will reach its final stages in the coming months. The bill was first proposed in 2021. Some of the measures could include a ban on the use of some facial recognition tools and could impose requirements on developers of tools such as ChatGPT to perform risk assessments and verify the quality of the data that they use to train their algorithms. 

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In addition, the United Kingdom also released a white paper this week describing how it can empower its regulators to oversee the development of artificial intelligence, focusing on issues such as tools' safety, transparency, and fairness in terms of how they are used.

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Some businesses and other entities, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., have in recent months blocked access to ChatGPT from their local networks as part of a series of security measures. It has been reported that Verizon Communications Inc. is making such a move as a result of a potential loss of ownership over proprietary data.

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In January, the New York City Public Schools banned the chatbot from their internet networks and school devices because of fears that it could be used for cheating and would have a negative impact on learning.