The head of Italy’s data protection watchdog was optimistic on Tuesday that changes will be made to the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT to enable it to become operational again in the country by the end of April. In late March, the Italian regulator temporarily blocked ChatGPT due to data privacy worries, becoming the first Western nation to take such action against the programme.
Pasquale Stanzione of the Data Protection Authority told Corriere della Sera that, if OpenAI, the American firm behind ChatGPT, is proactive and willing, the chatbot could be brought back online come April 30. Stanzione contended that OpenAI should ensure users’ ages are moderated and that there should be indicated some way of cutting back on the amount of “wrong answers” the chatbot can generate. Additionally, users should be informed what purpose the collected data is being used for, which is to train the algorithms that power the platform.
ChatGPT skyrocketed to success upon its launch last year, creating a great stir through its ability to generate essays, songs, tests and even news stories from smaller prompts. Nonetheless, concerns have been voiced about the whereabouts of the data it is based on and how it is going through its processing.
The tremendous success of ChatGPT resulted in OpenAI, the maker of the chatbot, clinching and deal with Microsoft, putting the program to work on the Bing search engine and other Microsoft software. This, in turn, launched a trend of similar AI chatbot programs, which have consequently seen venture capitalists funneling investments into them.
OpenAI is a tech company based in San Francisco and co-founded by CEO Sam Altman and CTO Greg Brockman. The firm’s mission is to deliver helpful, safe and responsible artificial intelligence without digital monopolies by creating AI-based technologies and products that benefit humanity. It is perceived that the development of these AI-based technologies are the future of how we will interact with machines. OpenAI is backed by tech giants like Microsoft, Reid Hoffman and Michael Seibel as well as venture capitalists like Andreessen Horowitz and Elon Musk, among others.
