Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

More people want to suspend new releases of popular AI tool

Yes you heard it right, Italian privacy regulator today Friday the 31st of March has ordered a ban on ChatGPT. It’s reasons? well of course it has to be alleged privacy violations.

Some AI fanatics are pointing out that it may be down to the fact Midjourney could create AI images of the pope in inappropriate attire. Well they have yet to ban AI-Generative art. This is purely down to the well known Chat bot – ChatGPT. This is not the first time OpenAI has faced some quite concerning news.

It has been announced by the Italian National Data Protection authority that it will block and investigate OpenAI immediately. OpenAI are the company behind GPT the model used for their popular chat bot ChatGPT. Chances are you have heard of it or even used it.

This block has been issues so that official regulators can analyse the way the company operates so it does not exploit Italian users data. Recently ChatGPT did have a data leak which may have been the direct result as to why this block has been issued.

Please note this order is only temporary until the company respects the EU’s landmark privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

It’s not Just Italy that’s Concerned about the AI Race

There has been a lot of calls from experts in the field to suspend ChatGPT. They want OpenAI to be investigate thoroughly to ensure it doesn’t breach any privacy or disinformation laws. Also they need to ensure that the company its self is protected against any bad actors and not vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks. It does look like the EU is keenly interested in ensuring the safety of users when using ChatGPT. We have already spoken about the Dark side of AI here before.

A major concern that a lot of people have with ChatGPT is the amount of data OpenAI is storing. Some of the data gathered may have been gathered on sketchy grounds as we have seen in the case of Getty Images vs Stability AI. So as we all expected it is going to have certain parties interested in this issue, privacy and user data is a hot topic especially online. We need to ensure data is protected and information provided for users is true and reliable, but as we have seen information chatGPT has shared in the past has proven to be false.

Another issue noted in the complaint about OpenAI is that it does not verify the age of users and exposes “minors to absolutely unsuitable answers compared to the their degree of development and self-awareness.“. This is not OK and has been mentioned a few times over the past few months, but OpenAI has not put anything into place to combat these problems.

So What Happens Next?

Is this the end for chatgpt in Italy or the start of regulation — Let’s hope this issue can be resolved swiftly

OpenAI has 20 days to communicate on how they plan on ensuring ChatGPT complies with EU privacy rules or it will face a charge of 4 percent of its global revenue. This is a huge chunk of cash. We do hope OpenAI complies so we can see they are at least trying to protect users when creating their AI tools for the public to use. If they pull out of the EU all together this would be very concerning and quite problematic for a lot of people using ChatGPT on a day to day basis.