Italy to OpenAI: ChatGPT Is Violating European Privacy Laws – PCMag Middle East
OpenAI is once again tangling with Italian authorities. After ChatGPT was briefly banned in the country last spring for privacy-related violations, OpenAI is now formally accused of violating Europe’s privacy laws by Italy’s data protection authority, the Garante.
As reported by TechCrunch, specifics haven’t been disclosed publicly, but it follows a months-long investigation. The Garante has given OpenAI 30 days to respond to the charges. But it faces fines of up to €20 million or 4% of its global annual turnover, as mandated by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy law.
The investigation stems from concerns raised by the Italian authority last year, when Italian regulators claimed ChatGPT was in potential violation of GDPR, which forces companies to properly disclose their data collection and storage practices to users. After a ban, OpenAI added new pages and forms to its website that offered more transparency about the data practices surrounding its chatbot. It was unbanned in Italy as regulators continued to investigate.
One of the core issues is how OpenAI collects the data uses to train its AI chatbot. It uses publicly available information on the web, among other things, but as TechCrunch notes, that often involves people’s personal data, and in the EU, “processing EU people’s data requires it to have a valid legal basis.”
A company needs to provide a legal basis for data collection under GDPR, and of the six ways the law allows companies to explain its processes, only one really fits: legitimate interests. But even there, companies need to provide people a way to opt out, and that could quickly get complicated and expensive.
Kegan is a freelance writer based in Gloucester, UK. His work has been featured on MakeUseOf, How-To Geek, and Unboxed Reviews. He has a passion for everything tech-related and has been building PCs since a young age. If he’s not building PCs, he’s gaming on them.
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