Starting July 9, OpenAI will completely block access to its GPT models for “unsupported” countries. The list includes countries such as China, Russia, and North Korea.

API customers from the affected countries received an email from OpenAI informing them that their access will be blocked starting July 9. OpenAI only allows traffic to and from the APIs from “supported countries and regions.” A list of supported countries can be found here.

Forbidden list

OpenAI offers its services in most parts of the world, with the exception of a few countries. It is no coincidence that these are generally nations with which the United States does not have good political relations. China immediately springs to mind, but also Russia, Iran, North Korea and Cuba. Don’t worry: Belgium is welcome at OpenAI.

ChatGPT has never been available in these countries and will not be available in the foreseeable future. Until now, users have been able to access OpenAI’s models via paid APIs. This is now changing too. It is unclear how many customers would be affected by this measure.

The political tensions between the US and China are having a major impact on the technology sector. The US government is banning its companies from trading with China and the Chinese government is doing the same. OpenAI is caught in this. Washington wants to put China at a disadvantage in the AI ​​race by limiting Chinese technology companies’ access to GPUs, but also to models and architecture.