Rome, Italy: ChatGPT has been banned by Italian authorities with immediate effect.
With this, Italy becomes the first nation in Europe to obstruct cutting-edge AI software, which among other things is capable of simulating and elaborate human dialogues.
On Friday (local time), the Italian data protection authorities announced that it was barring the Microsoft-backed chatbot created by US startup OpenAI and that it would look into whether it complied with the General Data Protection Regulation of the nation.
The Italian authority stated that a data breach impacting the discussions of ChatGPT users and data on payments made by service subscribers had been detected on March 20.
The ChatGPT protocol, which was established in November 2022, has been prohibited in a number of nations, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
The US company OpenAI and ChatGPT are the targets of an investigation launched by the Italian Data Protection Authority
There is no way for ChatGPT to carry on processing data against the law.
The platform’s development and management business, OpenAI, was immediately temporarily restricted by the Italian SA from handling the data of Italian users. Also, a fact-finding investigation into the case was started “according to a press release on its website, the Authority said
The authority noted the lack of information provided to users and other interested parties whose data was collected by OpenAI, but emphasised that there was no legal justification for the widespread collection and storage of personal information with the intention of “training” the platform’s operating algorithms.
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The service is reportedly targeted towards users above the age of 13 according to OpenAI’s terms of service, but the Italian SA highlights in its ruling that the absence of any age verification method exposes youngsters to obtaining comments that are wholly unsuitable to their age and knowledge.
OpenAI has a representative in the European Economic Area even though it is not based there.
According to the Italian data protection authority, OpenAI must notify the authorities of the steps it has taken to comply with the decision within 20 days, or else a punishment of up to 20 million euros (4 percent of the company’s total annual global turnover) may be levied.
