Government of Italy banned ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI, stating that it lacks an age verification system and that the collection and processing of user data violates the country's privacy laws.
The ruling, issued by the Italian Data Protection Authority, states that ChatGPT users are not provided with any information about the collection and use of their data, and that there is no “legal justification” for the collection of data said to be used to train ChatGPT. It also says that testing has shown that the information provided by ChatGPT "does not always correspond to factual circumstances" - that it is true that chatbots are prone to deception, and that although the terms of service limit their use to people over 13, there is no age verification system .
The regulator also noted a “data breach” that occurred on March 20, which it said affected “user conversations and subscriber payment information.” OpenAI recognized the problem on March 24, saying it took the system offline "due to a bug in an open source library that allowed some users to see titles from another active user's chat history."
“It is also possible that the first message of a newly created conversation was visible in someone else's chat history if both users were active around the same time,” OpenAI said.
Italy is the first country in the West to ban ChatGPT, although, as noted with the BBC, it is already blocked in other countries, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Italy may have some of the same reasons for blocking as these countries, as it is currently governed by a coalition of right-wing and far-right parties - ones that may object to public access to some "factual" data that casts them in an unflattering light. ut Italy is far from alone in its concerns about the rapid growth of ChatGPT and other AI applications.
A panel of AI experts, industry leaders and Elon Musk recently published open letter, calling for a six-month pause in the training of AIs more powerful than GPT-4, which was seen in some circles as at least partly a publicity stunt. But other agencies are taking more concrete steps: the New York City Department of Education, for example, said in January it would restrict access to software from school networks and devices, and Getty Images banned the download and sale of any AI-generated images. European consumer organization also called for an investigation into ChatGPT technology, and the Irish Data Protection Commission told the BBC that it was contacting the Italian regulator for more information about the reasons for the ban, presumably to develop its own policy and restrictions.
But despite the obvious (and understandable) nervousness about the explosion of AI and its potential to wreak havoc in all sorts of unpredictable ways, it doesn't look like it will slow down software development, at least in the short term. In January, Microsoft announced plans to invest $10 billion in open AI, and Google announced its own ChatGPT-like chatbot called Bard in February. Regulation is absolutely necessary, and further bans will almost certainly be introduced, but the development of AI, for better or worse, remains.
Recommended: Prompts for ChatGPT: tips for better results
