On Friday, the Italian government temporarily blocked the AI tool ChatGPT. This is the first time that anyone knows of that a government has done this.
The data protection authority in Italy said that OpenAI, the California company that makes ChatGPT, illegally collected personal information from users and didn’t have a way to check a user’s age to keep young people from seeing illegal content.
Because of privacy concerns, Italy is the first country to ban ChatGPT. The service is not available in China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran because OpenAI chose not to make it available there.
After ChatGPT came out, Italy’s decision shows that developers of cutting-edge AI are going to have to deal with new policy challenges. Users have been amazed by the program’s ability to write essays, have conversations that sound like they are between people, and do more complicated tasks like write computer code. However, it has raised concerns about the spread of false information, the effects on jobs, and broader risks to society.
This week, more than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers asked for a stop to the development of the most advanced AI systems so that safety policies could be put in place. The Center for AI and Digital Policy, a group that tries to get people to use technology in a good way, has asked the U.S. The Federal Trade Commission will stop OpenAI from putting out new versions of ChatGPT for sale.
In Italy, the government has told OpenAI to stop Italian internet users from getting to ChatGPT until the company gives them more information. Before a final decision can be made about what will happen with the product in the country, the company has 20 days to give the agency the information and possible solutions.
Regulators pointed to a data breach on March 20 that let some users’ conversations and payment information get out. The agency said that OpenAI could be fined up to 20 million euros, which is about $22 million, or 4% of its annual revenue from all over the world.
OpenAI said in a statement that it had turned off ChatGPT for users in Italy and that it cared about people’s privacy.
“We actively work to reduce personal data when training our AI systems like ChatGPT because we want our AI to learn about the world, not about private people,” the company said. “We also think that AI needs to be regulated.”
As of Friday at 5 p.m. in Italy, the chatbot had not yet heard that it would be blocked there. When a user there asked if it would be banned in Italy because of privacy concerns, ChatGPT said, “There should be no worries.”
The chatbot said, “I am an artificial intelligence language model that can be accessed from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.”
