World News | Italy bans ChatGPT, orders investigation into privacy breach

Rome [Italy]April 1 (ANI): Italian authorities have immediately blocked the chatbot ChatGPT in the country.

With this, Italy becomes the first European country to block advanced artificial intelligence software capable of simulating and orchestrating actions such as human conversation.

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Italy’s data protection agency said on Friday (local time) it was blocking a Microsoft-backed chatbot developed by U.S. startup OpenAI and would investigate whether it complied with the country’s General Data Protection Regulation.

Italian regulators said a data breach affecting ChatGPT user conversations and service subscriber payment information had been reported on March 20.

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ChatGPT, which was launched in November 2022, has been blocked in several countries, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Italy’s Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali) said it had launched an investigation into ChatGPT and the US company OpenAI.

“ChatGPT cannot continue to process data in violation of privacy laws. The Italian SA immediately imposed temporary restrictions on the processing of Italian user data by OpenAI, the US company that developed and manages the platform. A fact-finding case has also been launched to investigate the case,” the authority said, according to a statement on its website. The press release said.

The authority said it noted a lack of information on the users and all parties involved whose data OpenAI collected, but most importantly, a lack of legal basis to justify the mass collection and storage of personal data for the purpose of “training” the algorithms on which the platform operates.

In its order, the Italian SA emphasized that although according to OpenAI’s terms of service, the service is said to be aimed at users over the age of 13, due to the absence of any age verification mechanism, children may receive responses absolutely inappropriate for their age and consciousness.

OpenAI is not established in the EU, but has appointed representatives in the European Economic Area.

The Italian data protection agency said OpenAI must notify within 20 days of measures taken to comply with the order, or it could be fined up to 20 million euros or 4% of its total global annual turnover.

In its order, the Italian SA emphasized that no information will be provided to users and data subjects whose data Open AI collects; more importantly, there appears to be no legal basis for the mass collection and processing of personal data to “train” the algorithms on which the platform relies .

The Italian Data Protection Authority stated that, as confirmed by the tests carried out so far, the information provided by ChatGPT did not always correspond to the actual situation, and therefore the personal data processed were not accurate. (Arnie)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)