At the moment regulating structures are exploring whether ChatGPT meet privacy requirements since Italy has recently become the first Western country that blocked the wide-spread chatbot working on the base of artificial intelligence.
Italy's data protection institution announced that it is opening an investigation against OpenAI which is the company created the extremely popular chatbot. The institution explains that the reason of the investigation is a data breach happened to ChatGPT and resulting in lack of control on user conversations and payment data.
Among ChatGPT functions are answering questions, passing of exams and coding websites.
A UBS study tells that as an application ChatGPT has taken the first place in the speed of users number in the world and even in history. Starting from November 2022 the app has gained hundreds of millions of users.
Although the society has worried about the risks of AI more and more. The risks include disappearance of a great number of jobs and distribution of misinformation.
On March, key figures in technology, such as the head of Twitter Elon Mask, asked to stop the invention of these types of AI systems because of the concerns about the loss of control over the race.
Will other countries soon follow suit and ban ChatGPT?
The solution of Italy to block the access to the ChatGPT was followed by the demand of the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) to governments to explore all general AI chatbots.
There is a number of countries where ChatGPT is already impossible to use. These countries are China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
BEUC Deputy Director Ursula Pachl expressed an opinion that users are not ready for the app. They do not understand that this kind of applications happen to be manipulative and fraudulent. The data they receive can be incorrect.
In the interview to Euronews BEUC Deputy Director also said that she believes the case of ChatGPT is a significant one. It should serve as a warning signal for European Union. Despite the fact that European structures have been initiating an AI Act, it cannot be realized in the following 4 years. Besides, these technologies are developing really quickly.
Other regulating structures of Europe have begun observing ChatGPT more thoroughly.
Ireland's Data Protection Commission declared that it is keeping track of the Italian structures in order to learn the grounds for their actions. Also, the Commission said that it is going to adjust their actions according to EU Data Protection Authorities.
France’s data privacy institution, CNIL, announced that it is conducting an investigation after it got 2 complaints on the matter of ChatGPT. The institution also applied to the Italian partners so as to explore more information on the reason of the ban.
This week, the UK Information Commissioner's Office noticed in the post in its blog that AI developers cannot be apologized due to the misunderstanding of data privacy. Everyone who does not comply with the law will experience the consequences.
In order to answer all the concerns, OpenAI wrote a post on Wednesday where it describes its approach to AI safety.
According to the company, it is deleting personal information from training data in all possible places, adjusting its models in order to deny requests for personal information of private users, and also deal with requests to remove personal information from its data base.
EU prepares its AI act
Now the European Commission is discussing the first legislation on artificial intelligence in the world named the AI Act.
The European Commission Executive Vice President, Margrethe Vestager, said that to his mind it doesn’t seem that the law is going to ban AI systems.
Margrethe Vestager spoke up for the protection of AI technologies justifying it by that we must keep advancing our freedoms and protect our rights, no matter which tech is used. She called to not get rid of things in a few years that have taken decades to create.
France's Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot also stands for keeping of ChatGPT. In an interview to La Tribune, he admitted that the app doesn’t respect EU privacy laws. However, he expressed an opinion that it is more logical to develop new technologies instead of banning them all.
The German commissioner for data protection said to the Handelsblatt newspaper that Germany may repeat the way of Italy in the question of ChatGPT bloking it.
Dan Morgan, Europe Government Affairs Director at cybersecurity rating provider SecurityScorecard, talking to Euronews noticed that such a step shows the importance of compliance with the law to the companies in Europe.
He added that in Europe it is impossible to not follow the laws of privacy. Data protection is obligatory for each company.
The Italian regulatory institution mentioned that the company producing ChatGPT has to bring order to its data protection or pay a fine of €20 million or up to 4 per cent of annual revenues in 20 days.
The CEO of the company, Sam Altman, announced on Twitter that OpenAI was leaving the problem on the Italian government’s discretion.
He also noticed that Italy is among his favourite countries and he is waiting for his soon visit there.
"Italy is one of my favourite countries and I look forward to visiting again soon," he added.