Italy blocks ChatGPT for not respecting personal data legislation

The Italian authorities announced this Friday their decision to block the chatbot ChatGPTaccused of not respecting the legislation on personal data and of not having a system to verify the age of underage users.

This decision, “with immediate effect”, will have as a consequence “the provisional limitation of the processing of the data of Italian users with respect to Open AI“, creator of ChatGPT, indicated in a statement the national authority for the protection of personal data.

ChatGPT appeared in November and was quickly adopted by users impressed by its ability to clearly answer difficult questions, write sonnets, and even pass exams.

In its statement, the Italian authority stresses that ChatGPT “suffered on March 20 a loss of data (data Breach) on user conversations and information relating to the payment of subscribers to the payment service.”

The watchdog body also reproaches ChatGPT for “the lack of an informative note for users whose data is collected by OpenAI, but above all the absence of a legal basis that justifies the mass collection and conservation of personal data, in order to of “training the algorithms that make the platform work”.

In addition, while the robot is intended for people over 13 years of age, “the authority emphasizes that the absence of any filter to verify the age of users exposes minors to responses that are absolutely not in accordance with their level of development.”

The authority asks OpenAI to “communicate within 20 days the measures adopted” to remedy this situation, “under penalty of a penalty of up to 20 million euros (21.75 million dollars) or up to 4% of the world turnover annual”.

This announcement comes after the European police agency Europol warned Monday that criminals were willing to harness artificial intelligence like the ChatGPT chatbot to commit fraud and other cybercrime.