Italy blocks the use of ChatGPT for non-compliance with data laws

Italy today imposed an "immediate effect" block on U.S. tech company OpenAI's ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool, accusing it of failing to comply with consumer data protection law.

The Italian data protection guarantor assured in a statement that it has launched an investigation and that in the meantime the block will continue until ChatGPT “complies with the discipline of confidentiality.”

The popular ChatGPT was developed by the American company OpenIA, where several organizations have also called for its suspension for distrust of these artificial intelligence experiments.

The Italian agency reported that this chat, the most famous of the emerging artificial intelligence tools capable of mimicking human conversations, suffered the loss of data on its users and payment data of its subscribers on March 20.

In its order, the Italian guarantor highlights “the lack of information for users and all stakeholders from whom OpenAI collects data”, but “above all, the lack of a legal framework justifying the massive collection and storage of personal data”.

In addition, he claims that the information generated by ChatGPT "is not always true."

Finally, Italy deplores the “lack of any filters” when checking the age of its users, despite the fact that the service is aimed at people over 13 years old.

Thus, children are “exposed to responses that are completely out of proportion to their level of development and awareness.”

The use of artificial intelligence is becoming more widespread and growing, and for this reason, UNESCO has urged countries “without delay” to apply the Global Ethical Framework for this technology, adopted unanimously in 2021 by all 193 Member States.