Reference News Network — April 2
According to Spain’s El Economista website on March 31, Italy’s data protection authority announced on that day that it would ban the use of ChatGPT within its territory, citing OpenAI—the developer of the chatbot based on the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) model—for failing to comply with user data protection regulations.
Privacy is becoming an increasingly valuable asset in digital society, prompting government agencies worldwide to intensify efforts to safeguard their citizens’ personal information.
We have already seen numerous organizations across various countries identify activities that could jeopardize user data privacy—and Italy is the latest to take such action.
According to the Italian regulator, ChatGPT and its parent company, OpenAI, violated provisions of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As a result, Italian authorities decided to impose a (currently temporary) ban on the company’s operations in the country.
OpenAI is accused of lacking a lawful basis to justify ChatGPT’s “large-scale collection and storage of personal data for the purpose of ‘training’ its algorithms.”
Furthermore, the Italian government stated that the company handled users’ personal data improperly.
Just months after the rapid rise of artificial intelligence captured global imagination, we now seem to be returning to reality—reconsidering whether entrusting everything to this technology might not be such a good idea after all.
UNESCO has urged countries to “without delay” implement the global ethical framework for AI, which aims to maximize the benefits of artificial intelligence while minimizing its risks.
This is not to say that AI won’t represent a major leap forward in technological progress—but all such advancements must unfold within shared legal boundaries and under proper oversight.
This week also saw news that a group of prominent experts, analysts, and tech entrepreneurs—including Elon Musk himself—jointly signed an open letter calling for a pause in the development of new AI systems. They urged the industry to instead focus on establishing protocols and legal safeguards to protect users and their data.
For now, the Italian government has launched an investigation into OpenAI and demanded that the company ensure compliance with European law. The ball is now in ChatGPT’s court—but as of yet, the company has not responded to the developments in Italy.
