OpenAI's ChatGPT is the viral language model that has grabbed massive limelight lately due to its conversational abilities. However, Italian watchdog Garante has flagged concerns about the use of OpenAI's technology in the past. In a new update, the data protection authority informed the AI research and deployment company that their famous AI chatbot violates data protection rules, according to Reuters.
The report noted that Garante is among the proactive authorities assessing the compliance of ChatGPT and AI with the European Union's data privacy rules and banned the chatbot for a short duration in 2023 on the alleged grounds that it breached EU rules. A probe was undertaken at that time, which is now complete with the conclusion that "one or more" potential privacy violations exist.
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The authority said the AI company has about 30 days to defend the argument. The investigation will also consider the findings of the European task force, which comprises privacy watchdogs of the territory. For the unaware, Italy was the first Western country to restrain ChatGPT. The furious rise of the model grabbed massive attention, including that of lawmakers and regulators.
According to the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 2018, any company that breaches rules shall face fines of up to four per cent of the business's global turnover. In December 2023, EU representatives agreed on a provisional note to regulate AI technologies such as ChatGPT and others. It was a step ahead in governing the evolving technology to curb misuse, exploitation and other risks.
Coming to ChatGPT, the language model debuted in November 2022. Since then, it has mounted to fame due to its natural conversational tone of output and impressive capabilities to answer diverse queries. However, researchers have flagged concerns at regular intervals of the user data which is used to improve the model for better output.
With inputs from Reuters