Italy’s data protection authority has banned ChatGPT, a popular artificial intelligence chatbot, over concerns about the way it collects and uses personal data.
The authority, the Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali, said in a statement that ChatGPT does not have a proper legal basis to collect personal information about the people using it. That data is collected to help train the algorithm that powers ChatGPT’s answers.
The authority also accused OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, of failing to check the age of its users, and not properly enforcing rules banning users under the age of 13. Those young users could potentially be exposed to “unsuitable answers” from the chatbot, given their relative lack of development, the authority said.
It is just the latest censure of ChatGPT, and the artificial intelligence systems underpinning it that are made by creators OpenAI. Italy’s decision came days after a range of experts called for a halt on the development of new systems, amid fears that the rush to create new AI tools could be dangerous.
European consumer organization BEUC also called for an investigation from EU and national authorities on Thursday, pointing specifically to the lack of regulation for ChatGPT and other systems and potential privacy problems. It called for an immediate investigation “into the risks of ChatGPT and similar chatbots for European consumers”.
The statement from Italy’s regulators pointed specifically to a data breach, in which users reported being able to see other people’s chat histories. ChatGPT went down for a brief period and once it was brought back online OpenAI reported the outage was to fix the data leak.
OpenAI has a designated representative in the European Economic Area, which now has 20 days to provide information on measures it has taken in response to regulators’ concerns.
It is not clear how many of the app’s users are in Italy. But it is estimated to have been used by 100 million people all over the world in its first two months.
The ban on ChatGPT in Italy is a sign of the growing concern about AI, in part about the privacy implications of artificial intelligence. As AI systems become more sophisticated, the companies building them are collecting more and more data about us.
Experts are warning that it is important to be aware of the privacy implications of AI, and to take steps to protect your data. Many companies are telling employees to be careful about the information shared with AI systems.
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