Last Update: April 19, 2023, 01:06 AM IST
The head of Italy’s privacy watchdog was hopeful on Tuesday that OpenAI would adjust its AI chatbot so that it could be back online in the country at the end of April. (file photo)
Italian watchdog temporarily blocked ChatGPT in late March over data privacy concerns
The head of Italy’s privacy watchdog was hopeful on Tuesday that OpenAI would adjust its AI chatbot so that it could be back online in the country at the end of April.
Italy’s watchdog temporarily blocked ChatGPT in late March over data privacy concerns, becoming the first Western country to take action against the popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
“We are ready to reopen ChatGPT on April 30 if there is a willingness from OpenAI to take useful steps,” Pasquale Stanzione, the head of the data protection authority, told the Corriere della Sera daily.
“It seems to be on the company’s side, we’ll see,” he said.
ChatGPT created a global sensation last year when it was released to create essays, songs, exams and even news articles from short prompts.
But critics have long been unclear about where ChatGPT and its competitors got their data or how they processed it.
Italy’s data protection watchdog had said US firm OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, had no legal basis to justify the massive collection and storage of personal data to train the algorithms underlying the platform’s operation.
The authority also highlighted the lack of clarity as to whose data was being collected.
It said that wrong answers given by the chatbot were not being handled properly and accused the firm of exposing children to “absolutely inappropriate answers”.
On Tuesday, Stanzione insisted that users’ ages should be verified and that OpenAI should “indicate a method to reduce the risk of incorrect answers”.
Users should be “explicitly informed that their data is being used for a specific purpose, the training of an algorithm”, he said.
The immense success of ChatGPT led OpenAI to a multi-billion dollar deal with Microsoft, which uses the technology in its Bing search engine and other programs.
It also sparked a gold rush among other tech firms and venture capitalists, with Google quickly rolling out its own chatbot and investors pouring cash into AI projects of all kinds.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)
