Italy bans ChatGPT. A European-wide ban coming soon ?🤖🚫

Cliquez ici pour lire en français

As ChatGPT continues to amaze more and more people, many voices are being heard for its ban, or at least its regulation. Italy becomes the first country to suspend, at least temporarily, ChatGPT on its territory.

ChatGPT might not be compliant with the RGPD👩🏾‍⚖️

Introduced in 2016 in the European Union, the GDPR, acronym for General Data Protection Regulation, is a set of rules that govern the processing of personal data in the European Union. It applies to all public and private organizations, whether they process personal data on their own behalf or not, as soon

• that it is established on the territory of the European Union
• or that its activity directly targets European residents.

The GDPR is responsible for the pop-ups asking us to accept cookies when we visit a website.

To enforce this regulation, various territorial authorities within the European Union have been mandated. In France, for example, it is the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés), and in Italy, the Garante. It is this data protection authority that decided to suspend ChatGPT in Italy.

In support of its decision, the Garante sets out four alleged violations by ChaGPT :

• ChatGPT has allegedly failed to notify the Italian authorities of a data leak of some premium subscribers, dating from March 20. However, the GDPR specifies that any leak must be reported within a very short time.
• ChatGPT has allegedly not informed its users that data is being collected by OpenAI. More importantly, there appears to be no legal basis for collecting and processing massive amounts of data to train the algorithms on which the platform relies.
• The information provided by ChatGPT does not always correspond to the factual circumstances, and inaccurate personal data are processed.
• ChatGPT has no age verification mechanism. This exposes children to receiving responses that are completely inappropriate for their age and sensitivity. And knowing that the chatbot is supposed to be aimed at users over 13, this is a huge failing.

OpenAI has until April 19 to explain what measures will be taken to comply with the Garante’s requests, failing which the company will be subject to an administrative fine of 20 million euros or 4% of its annual worldwide revenue.

Can ChatGPT become compliant ?🤔

ChatGPT is designed to retrieve data in a massive way to improve itself. And for that, a data is not limited to a particular use. Except that the GDPR specifies that for any data collected, the company must be able to specify what use it will be put to. ChatGPT is therefore fundamentally designed not to comply with the GDPR.

With this first decision of a European authority, it is hard to believe that in the coming weeks the other European authorities will not also get involved in the case. Will they follow the Italian authority in its approach? One thing is sure, we have not finished hearing about ChatGPT.

Sources : Garante, 01net, CNIL