The popularity of ChatGPT, a chatbot created by OpenAI and which This has prompted major tech companies to accelerate their plans to incorporate generative artificial intelligence into their products and services.. The new Bing, the long-awaited Bard, an app with a co-pilot mode… 2023 is the year of generative artificial intelligence, and we still haven’t said goodbye to March. We will probably see some slowdown in the coming months as it seems very difficult to maintain the momentum of this first quarter, but still we can expect new developments and interesting announcements in this regard.

The value that artificial intelligence can bring in many contexts is exceptional. From tasks as simple as helping to better manage our e-mail communications to significantly speeding up medical research, its reach is intended to be nearly universal and correct execution this could be extremely beneficial in many ways.

However, there are valid concerns about the potential negative consequences of artificial intelligence. Just yesterday, we shared this issue following an open letter signed by more than 1,000 experts in science and technology. Misuse of artificial intelligence can have disastrous consequences for many reasons, and therefore the signatories of the letter request that the current development be suspended for six months in order to to allow regulators to perform analysis risks and propose regulatory measures to diffuse them.

However, not all risks are of this type, there are others that we have known about for a long time and which are not only related to artificial intelligence, and a clear example of this is e.g. protection of user data. You may recall that OpenAI recently acknowledged a limited data leak from ChatGPT users. Well, this incident has already started to have legal consequences for the company.

GPDP (Personal Data Protection Guarantee), the Italian data protection regulator issued an order to block access to ChatGPT in Italy, due to issues with data collection and management as well as age verification of its users, as it reported in a press release today. The measure is in response to last week’s incident, but not solely focused on it.

ChatGPT block in Italy it is temporaryas it is subject to OpenAI, which addresses issues identified by the Italian regulator, which states “the absence of a legal basis that justifies the collection and bulk storage of personal data for the purpose of “training” the algorithms underlying the operation of the platform«, and also that «although – according to the conditions published by OpenAI – the service is aimed at people over 13 years old, the authority points out that the absence of any filter to verify the age of users exposes minors to completely inappropriate answers«.

This move is more important than it might seem at one point because GPDP actions are protected by compliance with the GDPR, the European standard for data protection, valid throughout the EU common space. In other words, if ChatGPT is found not to comply with the provisions of the law in Europe, we can expect similar movements from other regulators of the old continent.

As we can read in the mentioned document, OpenAI has already appointed a moderator for the European jurisdiction, and he You now have a 20-day period to communicate to the authorities the measures taken by the company to solve the problems identified by the regulars and ends by reminding that if they do not act in this sense, the creators of ChatGPT will be subject to a fine of up to 20 million euros or up to 4% of the annual worldwide turnover.