Italy is the first Western country to take such action against the popular artificial intelligence chatbot.
The Italian government’s privacy watchdog has temporarily blocked the artificial intelligence (AI) software ChatGPT over data privacy concerns.
The announcement on Friday made Italy the first Western country to take such action against the popular AI chatbot.
The Italian data protection authority described its action as provisional “until ChatGPT respects privacy”. The measure means that the company is temporarily not allowed to store data from Italian users.
The watchdog said ChatGPT developer OpenAI had no legal basis to justify “the massive collection and storage of personal data for the purpose of ‘training’ the algorithms that underpin the operation of the platform”.
It further referenced a March 20 data breach when user conversations and payment information were compromised, an issue the US company blamed on a bug.
Since the launch of ChatGPT, it has experienced rapid growth. Millions of people use the software for activities ranging from developing architectural designs to writing essays and composing messages, songs, novels and jokes.
It has also sparked an AI race among other tech companies and venture capitalists. Google is rushing out with its own chatbot, called Bardand investors are pouring money into all kinds of AI projects.
But critics have long been concerned about where ChatGPT and its competitors get their data from or how they process it.
“We don’t actually know how the data is being used, because not enough information is being given to the public,” Ruta Liepina, an AI fellow at the University of Bologna in Italy, told Al Jazeera.
“At the same time, many new regulations are being proposed in the European Union, but it will be a matter of how they are enforced and how much the companies work together to show information needed to better understand what these technologies are like. to work,” said Liepina.
The AI systems that power such chatbots, known as large language models, can mimic human writing styles based on the vast trove of digital books and online writing they have taken up.
Some public schools and universities around the world have blocked the ChatGPT website from their local networks due to concerns about student plagiarism, but it was not clear how Italy would block it on a national level.
The move is unlikely to affect applications from companies that already have licenses with OpenAI to use the same technology that powers the chatbot, such as Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
This week, hundreds of experts and industry figures signed an open letter calling for a pause in the development of powerful AI systems, arguing that they pose “serious risks to society and humanity”.
The letter was prompted by OpenAI’s release this month of GPT-4, a more powerful version of its chatbot, with even less transparency about its data sources.
The Italian watchdog ordered OpenAI to report within 20 days what measures it has taken to ensure user data privacy, or face a fine of up to $22 million or 4 percent of its annual global revenue.
AI experts said it’s likely more governments will follow suit and enact similar rules.
“I think there might be a sequel from other countries, [especially] if the OpenAI company does not provide more information on how the algorithm is trained,” said Liepina.
The CEO of the San Francisco-based company, Sam Altman, announced this week that he would travel six continents in May to talk to users and developers about the technology.
His journey includes a stop in Brussels, where European Union lawmakers have negotiated sweeping new rules to restrict high-risk AI tools.
Altman said his time in Europe would include stops in Madrid, Munich, London and Paris.