According to reports on Friday, the creator of ChatGPT has confirmed that the AI chatbot is now accessible in Italy, following the fulfillment of regulatory requirements. This comes after Italian authorities temporarily suspended the chatbot due to privacy issues.
The article discusses how OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot is now available again in Italy after the company met the demands of regulators who temporarily blocked it over privacy concerns. The Italian data protection authority, Garante, had ordered OpenAI to temporarily stop processing Italian users’ personal information while it investigated a possible data breach. The measures taken by OpenAI to address the issues include adding information on its website about how it collects and uses data that trains the algorithms powering ChatGPT, providing EU users with a new form for objecting to having their data used for training, and adding a tool to verify users’ ages when signing up.
Generative AI systems like ChatGPT use vast pools of online data like digital books, blog posts, and other media to generate text, images, and other content that mimics human work. Their rapid development has raised concerns among officials and tech leaders about possible ethical and societal risks. European Union negotiators are currently updating draft artificial intelligence regulations that have been years in the making.
The Italian regulator’s ban on ChatGPT last month came after it found that some users’ messages and payment information were exposed to others. It also questioned whether there was a legal basis for OpenAI to collect massive amounts of data used to train ChatGPT’s algorithms and raised concerns that the system could sometimes generate false information about individuals.
Other regulators are now investigating ChatGPT, with France’s data privacy regulator and Canada’s privacy commissioner looking into complaints about the chatbot. The head of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, has also warned that the U.S. government will “not hesitate to crack down” on harmful business practices involving artificial intelligence.
