On Thursday, Spain opened an investigation into ChatGPT, a chatbot designed by the artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI, while the European Union launched a working group in order to promote cooperation on the subject. The Spanish Data Protection Agency declared that it had opened its own initiative to investigate the American company. The initial reaction came at the end of March as Italy blocked the chatbot due to certain concerns of data use.
ChatGPT first appeared in the public domain in November and was admired for its capacities to answer difficult questions, writing a sonnet or producing a computer code. Microsoft funded the chatbot and integrated it into several of its services. It is often pointed out as a possible competitor to other popular search engines like Google. Inevitably, the chatbot had been blocked by countries like China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. The French personal data protection authority CNIL also decided to open “a control procedure” same day that Spain opened the investigation.
The working group launched by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) is responsible for coordinating the authorities that are similar to the CNIL in the EU member states. The purpose of the board is to promote an exchange of ideas among the states regarding possible actions take against the AI chatbot. OpenAI declared that they are focused on protecting the data of individuals and that they are compliant with the rules and regulations present in the European Union. The Italian data protection watchdog presented a set of requisites that need to be fulfilled by OpenAI by April 30 to lift the ban on AI chatbots.
OpenAI is a San Francisco based artificial intelligence research laboratory that has been co-founded by two of the world’s leading investors, Elon Musk, and Microsoft co-founder, Sam Altman. It is a nonprofit organization that is primarily focused on developing breakthrough artificial intelligence technologies. Founded in 2015, OpenAI works on technologies that it believes will make the world a better place and has achieved success in different fields ranging from robotics to natural language processing. OpenAI currently has operations in several countries around the world including the United States, the UK and India.
