Italy has now made ChatGPT illegal.
Privacy concerns led the country’s data protection authorities to say that an AI service would be blocked and looked into.
The Italian agency said that the system does not have a good legal reason to collect personal information about the people who use it. This information is used to train the algorithm that makes ChatGPT’s answers.
Authorities also said that OpenAI didn’t check the ages of its ChatGPT users and didn’t follow the rules that said no one over 13 could use it. Authorities said that those young users might get “inappropriate answers” from the chatbot because they aren’t as mature as other people.
It’s the latest criticism of ChatGPT and the artificial intelligence systems that make it work, which are made by the company that made ChatGPT, OpenAI. Italy’s decision came after several experts called for a halt to the development of new systems. They were worried that the rush to make new AI tools could be dangerous.
Risks of ChatGPT
Thursday, the European consumer group BEUC also asked the EU and national governments to look into ChatGPT and other systems because they don’t have any rules and there could be privacy problems. It asked that “the risks of ChatGPT and similar chatbots for European consumers” be looked into right away.
In their new statement, Italy’s regulators specifically mentioned a data breach that happened last week. Users said they were able to see the chat histories of other people.
There is no office for OpenAI in the EU. But it has a representative in the European Economic Area, who has 20 days to tell regulators what steps it has taken to address their concerns.
It’s not clear how many people in Italy use the apps. But 100 million people around the world are thought to have used it in its first two months.
A request for comment from The Independent was met with silence from the company.
At the time of publication, it looked like the service could still be used from Italy. The block says that OpenAI has to stop processing the data of Italian users until the privacy problems are fixed. This suggests that the company will have to block Italian users on its own.
