Chatgpt Violated European Privacy Laws, Italy Tells Chatbot Maker OpenAI

Italian regulators said they told OpenAI that its ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot has violated European Union’s stringent data privacy rules.

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The country’s data protection authority, known as Garante, said this week that it notified San Francisco-based OpenAI of breaches of the EU rules, known as General Data Protection Regulation.

The watchdog started investigating ChatGPT last year, when it temporarily banned within Italy the chatbot that can produce text, images and sound in response to users’ questions.

Based on the results of its “fact-finding activity,” the watchdog said it “concluded that the available evidence pointed to the existence of breaches of the provisions” in the EU privacy rules.

OpenAI, which has 30 days to reply to the allegations, said it would work constructively with Italian regulators.

“We believe our practices align with GDPR and other privacy laws, and we take additional steps to protect people’s data and privacy,” a company statement said. “We want our AI to learn about the world, not about private individuals. We actively work to reduce personal data in training our systems like ChatGPT, which also rejects requests for private or sensitive information about people.”