On March 31, 2023, the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali) announced that it had taken the step of temporarily blocking OpenAI’s artificial intelligence software, ChatGPT. This emergency measure was taken in response to the serious data breach reported on March 20,th of that year. The breach exposed users’ data in violation of the European Union data protection rules, causing serious concerns.
Since the release of ChatGPT four months ago, the software has gained global popularity for its ability to generate written content, from academic essays to business plans and news articles. There have even been public schools and universities who have blocked the use of ChatGPT due to worries of student plagiarism.
The Italian Data Protection Authority cited the lack of information given to users regarding the processing of their data as a key reason for the ban. This lack of transparency extended to the service’s terms of use. According to the terms of use, ChatGPT should only be available to users younger than 13 years of age. However, the absence of an age verification mechanism made it difficult to determine if users were of the appropriate age or not. As a result, the service opened the door to inappropriate content offered to children that were too young to be exposed to it.
For these reasons, OpenAI is now barred from processing the data of Italian users until such time as it meets the data protection rules set out by the Italian regulatory bodies. OpenAI has 20 days to communicate the measures it is going to implement for data protection compliance. If OpenAI fails to respond within the allotted time, it could face a penalty of up to €20 million ($21.8 million) or up to 4% of its global annual turnover.
OpenAI is a US-based company that was awarded the prestigious Turing Award in 2019. The company is a leader in AI research and development, utilizing the most advanced technologies and processes in their work. OpenAI’s mission is to create safe, trustworthy, and efficient artificial general intelligence that can improve the lives of humans.
Sam Altman is OpenAI’s co-founder and chairman. He was previously the President of Y Combinator and CEO of a web search engine called Loopt. Altman is one of the leading voices in the tech industry, advocating for the use of technology responsibly and for the ethical development of artificial intelligence. He is a highly sought after speaker, having been invited to give talks at conferences around the world and is a professor of computer science at Stanford University.
