In March this year, Italy’s data protection agency Garante issued a ban on the use of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot service from the company OpenAI, due to data privacy concerns. Recently, it was announced that the Italian government has lifted the ban against ChatGPT, after OpenAI agreed to put new safeguards in place to protect user’s personal data.
The new data protection features include setting up a signup form which will ask users to define their age. For minors aged between 13 and 17, it prompts them to obtain permission from a parent or guardian before accessing the ChatGPT service. Additionally, the service now provides users with a link enabling them to view types of personal information accessed and collected by the ChatGPT AI to train the chatbot. Furthermore, the service added the option for users to reject the collection of their personal data for training purposes.
The introduction of these new measures highlights the on-going concerns around chatbot AI services like ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing Chat, and Google Bard when it comes to using online data to generate responses. Although these measures are certainly a positive step, it likely won’t be the last considering the impact and potential issues these chatbot services have on user privacy.
OpenAI is a California-based AI research laboratory founded in 2018 by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. The company, known for its efforts in advancing artificial intelligence and robotics research, has since become the centre of attention due to its effort in developing and offering the ChatGPT chatbot AI service. The company focuses on researching and developing approaches to teaching machines to think and act in a similar way to humans.
