The European Data Protection Board has announced the forming of a task force to help countries in dealing with the popular chatbot ChatGPT by OpenAI, a US-based company. Italy had previously enacted a temporary ban of the AI program over alleged data breaches with regards to privacy laws. On the same day, France has launched its own investigation with five complaints already filed. In addition, Spain’s data protection agency has issued an inquiry into the software and its creator.
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence application that is able to generate conversations and essays from minimal prompts. It has already proven to be successful in challenging exams, although the capabilities of the chatbot have faced some suspicion with potential for cheating in schools, data manipulation, and replacing human workers. The enormous amount of data that it needs to operate has raised possible concerns on where these data comes from and how they are managed.
Eric Bothorel, a French lawmaker, was one of the five that filed a complaint with the CNIL (France’s data regulating body) with ChatGPT inventing details about him such as his birthdate and job history. Bothorel took to Twitter to say, “The issue is not banning ChatGPT, it is asking OpenAI to comply with the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] if the CNIL confirms that it must.”
OpenAI has responded to Italy’s order, promising to protect people’s privacy and that the software is compliant with law. To enable ChatGPT to operate in Italy again, there have been certain adjustments needed to comply to the GDPR rules as well as to provide a legal means for data collection.
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory controlled by Elon Musk and other tech entrepreneurs, which has been successful in developing certain AI technology. Its key areas of research include natural language processing, conversational understanding, deep learning and visualization. Apart from ChatGPT, it also has other big projects such as GPT-3 (open-source framework to create natural language processing and natural language understanding models).
Eric Bothorel is a French politician who leads the parliamentary group of the French Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste). He is also the spokesperson for the “Groupe Socialiste” in the European Parliament. He is known for speaking out against corruption and corporate billionaires and in favour of protecting civil liberties and consumer rights. He was one of the five plaintiffs that filed a complaint to CNIL against the ChatGPT software.
