The Italian Data Protection authority said they banned ChatGPT temporarily until it respects privacy.
On the other hand, OpenAI said we are committed to protecting people’s privacy, and we believe we comply with GDPR and other privacy laws,” said OpenAI spokesperson. “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 private individuals.”
The Italian officials said OpenAI must report within 20 days about ensuring the user’s privacy or would face a fine of 20 million EUROS ($21.68 million) or 4% of annual global revenue.
“The Privacy Guarantor notes the lack of information to users and all interested parties whose data is collected by OpenAI,” the Guarantor for the Protection of Personal Data (GPDP) said in a statement. It added that ChatGPT’s processing of user data can provide an inaccurate picture, “as the information provided by ChatGPT does not always correspond to the real data.”
OpenAI said it had disabled its ChatGPT service in ITALY, as requested by Italian data protection regulator Garante.
“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,” a European Commission spokesperson said.
The ChatGPT has been blocked in other countries, including China, Hong Kong, Iran, Russia, and parts of Africa, where users cannot create OpenAI accounts.
“We also believe that AI regulation is necessary — so we look forward to working closely with the Garante and educating them on how our systems are built and used”, OpenAI told BBC.
Last week OpenAI temporarily disabled ChatGPT due to Bug, which exposed users’ conversation data.
“Upon deeper investigation, we also discovered that the same bug may have caused the unintentional visibility of payment-related information of 1.2% of the ChatGPT Plus subscribers who were active during a specific nine-hour window,” OpenAI said in the update.
Currently, the company has patched the Bug.
OpenAI released ChatGPT last year. It reached 100 million active users in January 2023.
