Image of the ChatGPT logo on a screen STEFANI REYNOLDS (AFP)
Italy has taken a step to curb artificial intelligence. At the height of this technology, Rome blocked “with immediate effect” this Friday the ChatGPT tool, the intelligent chatbot capable of simulating and processing human conversations and belonging to the American technology company OpenAI, which the transalpine country accuses of not respecting consumer privacy law. The block will be lifted if you demonstrate compliance with Italian data protection regulations.
The Italian Guarantor for the Protection of Personal Data, an independent administrative authority that ensures the protection of user and consumer data, believes that the platform collects user data illegally and has launched an investigation to clarify the exact functioning of the platform of this tool and determine if you have committed an offence.
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The Italian body ensures that this chat, the most famous of the emerging generative artificial intelligence, suffered a data loss (or data breach) on March 20th about its users and the conversations they have with your subscribers’ machine and payment information.
In a statement, the Italian guarantor has criticized “the lack of information for users and all interested parties” about the process of collecting and managing private data on the platform. And it denounces “the lack of a legal basis justifying the massive collection and storage of personal data to ‘train’ the algorithms that manage the operation of the platform”.
The Italian Authority claims, based on “the checks carried out”, that the information provided by ChatGPT “does not always correspond to the real data”, which, according to the Guarantor, “results in inaccurate processing of personal data”.
Finally, Italy regrets “the absence of any kind of filter” when verifying the age of its users, although the service is aimed at people over 13 years old. And she condemns “the fact that minors are exposed to completely inadequate reactions in terms of their level of development and their self-confidence”.
Italy has asked OpenAI to communicate within 20 days the measures taken to comply with the guarantor’s request, failing which it faces a fine of up to 20 million euros or up to 4% of annual turnover.
Guido Scorza, board member of the Data Protection Agency, in an interview with the newspaper La Repubblica, criticized “the lack of information on the handling of users’ personal data” offered by the American company. And he has spoken about the risks that this type of tool poses: “With ChatGPT and chatbots we have conversations and in those conversations we often tend to share a large part of our lives. You can ask when Paolo Rossi was born and get an answer. This is personal data. Any question about human life is data processing. Not to mention those it mishandles,” he states. And he gives an example: “If I ask the chatbot when Guido Scorza joined the College of Privacy Garantors, it tells me it was 2016. But I joined in 2020. In addition to illegal data processing, the treatment is in many cases inaccurate.
Scorza assures that Italy has acted autonomously since OpenAI is not native to Europe, i.e. outside the EU cooperation procedures, but it “encourages a debate at European level to see if it is possible to work together and act together “.
The use of artificial intelligence is becoming more common, and for this reason UNESCO has called on countries to “immediately” apply the Global Ethical Framework for this technology, which the 193 member states unanimously adopted in 2021, which contains guidelines for maximizing the benefits of AI and the to reduce associated risks. “The world needs stricter ethical standards for artificial intelligence: this is the great challenge of our time,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay.
Just days ago, Tesla founder and billionaire Elon Musk and more than 1,000 technology researchers, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak; Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype, as well as engineers from Meta or Microsoft called for a pause in the development of advanced artificial intelligence for at least six months. They point out that the goal is to stop what they call “a dangerous race leading to the development of more unpredictable models with ever-increasing capabilities.” “Artificial intelligence systems can pose a profound risk to society and humanity. Unfortunately, it is not being developed with the proper planning and care,” they point out in their letter.
In the United States, several organizations have also called for the suspension of ChatGPT because they are suspicious of these artificial intelligence experiments.
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