Italy bans ChatGPT over data privacy concerns

In a move that one Italian minister has called “disproportionate”, Italy has temporarily banned ChatGPT due to data privacy concerns.

Italy has made the decision to temporarily ban ChatGPT within the country due to concerns that it violates the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR is a law concerning data and data privacy which imposes security and privacy obligations on those operating within the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA).

The Italian data protection agency, Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali (also known as Garante) said there was an “absence of any legal basis that justifies the massive collection and storage of personal data” to “train” ChatGPT, in addition to accusing OpenAI of failing to verify the age of users of ChatGPT.

Italy’s ban has led to privacy regulators in Ireland and France contacting the country’s data privacy agency to find out more regarding the decision to ban ChatGPT.  

A spokesperson for Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner told Reuters: "We are following up with the Italian regulator. We will coordinate with all EU data protection authorities in relation to this matter."

Not all those are in favor of the ban, however, with Italy’s transport minister and leader of the League party, Matteo Salvini, stating in an Instagram post that the ban is “hypocritical” and “disproportionate”.

Salvini added: “Every technological revolution brings great changes, risks and opportunities. It is right to control and regulate through an international cooperation between regulators and legislators, but it cannot be blocked.”

OpenAI has disabled ChatGPT in Italy as per the agency’s request, but noted that it actively works to prevent the use of private data in the training of its machine learning models. The company also said that it would be working with Granate to “educat[e] them on how [its] systems are built and used”.