The European Union’s data protection regulating body has established a task force to assist member countries in responding to the emergence of OpenAI’s popular AI bot, ChatGPT. Last month, Italy banned the program over data gathering concerns, and the Frenchdata regulator has just reported receiving five grievances against it.
As ChatGPT continues to garner attention from the public, the EU’s Data Protection Supervisor has understood the importance of regulating its use and aims to provide guidance with the formation of the task force. The commission plans to look into the detailed operation of the bot, and the accompanying ethics, over a period of several months, to assist in the regulation of the bot and its related activities.
OpenAI, based in California, is an independent Artificial Intelligence lab building a digital environment that provides access to powerful AI technologies in a responsible and safe way. The company has been working on various initiatives over the last few years, and ChatGPT is its latest project – an AI language model that allows conversation between humans and machine. While the creation of the chatbot has been received positively by many, some have raised privacy concerns due to the lack of control over data gathering and algorithm operations.
The task force will consist of representatives from EU member countries and will be led by the European Union Data Protection Supervisor. Other members of the task force will include academic experts, industry representatives, and non-governmental organisations, all of whom will assess the progress of ChatGPT along the lines of ethical, legal and technical aspects. The formation of the task force will help in finding a balanced platform where AI technologies can be used and developed in an ethical and responsible manner.
