The Italian agency, also known as Garante, accused Microsoft Corp-backed OpenAI of failing to check the age of ChatGPT users and the “absence of any legal basis that justifies the massive collection and storage of personal data” to “train” the chatbot.
OpenAI responded by stopping access to Italian users.
The agency said it has no intention of putting a brake on the development of AI but reiterated the importance of respecting rules aimed at protecting the personal data of Italian and European citizens.
In a video conference late on Wednesday, OpenAI pledged to be more transparent about the way it handles user data and verifies the ages of users, the authority said. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was among the attendees.
The company said it would send Garante a document regarding measures to respond to its requests. The data authority said it would evaluate the proposals made by OpenAI.
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The ban by Italy has piqued the interest of other privacy regulators in Europe who are studying if harsher measures are needed to rein in chatbots and whether to coordinate such actions. In February, Garante banned AI chatbot company Replika from using the personal data of Italian users, citing risks to minors and emotionally fragile people.
Why the ban?
The statement from the Italian authorities said that a data breach affecting ChatGPT users’ conversations and information on payments by subscribers to the service was reported on March 20.
An official statement from Italy’s data protection authority read, “The Italian SA imposed an immediate temporary limitation on the processing of Italian users’ data by OpenAI, the US-based company developing and managing the platform. An inquiry into the facts of the case was initiated as well.”
The move came days after a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives, along with Twitter CEO and OpenAI confounder Elon Musk wrote an open letter to the US Federal Trade Commission calling for a six-month pause in training systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched model GPT-4.
“In its order, the Italian SA highlights that no information is provided to users and data subjects whose data are collected by Open AI; more importantly, there appears to be no legal basis underpinning the massive collection and processing of personal data to ‘train’ the algorithms on which the platform relies,” the statement added.
The company has 20 days to provide the agency with the material and possible remedies before a final decision can be made about its future in the country.
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