OpenAI’s ChatGPT breaches data privacy rules – Italy

Italy’s data protection authority, Garante, says it has informed OpenAI, the developer behind the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot application ChatGPT, about its non-compliance with data protection regulations.

The Italian data privacy watchdog, one of the most active in the EU, briefly banned ChatGPT last year for an alleged breach of privacy rules. The regulatory authority initiated an investigation into the matter, which has now reached its conclusion.

In a recent statement, the authority disclosed that the probe has uncovered certain elements that suggest the existence of one or more potential violations of data privacy regulations.

Defence

Garante says it has given OpenAI 30 days to present its defence against an investigation. The investigation will take into account work done by a European task force made up of national privacy watchdogs.

Italy was the first West European country to curb ChatGPT, whose rapid development has attracted attention from lawmakers and regulators.

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Introduced in 2018, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes fines of up to 4% of a company’s global turnover for any breach of the rules.

Last December, the lawmakers and governments of the European Union agreed on provisional terms to regulate AI systems such as ChatGPT. The move is a significant step forward in the direction of establishing comprehensive rules and guidelines to govern the rapidly evolving AI technology.