Italy bans ChatGPT
The country’s privacy regulator gave OpenAI 20 days to comply with its order.
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The government of Italy hasbanned ChatGPT, the AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, saying that it lacks an age verification system and that its collection and processing of user data is in violation of the country’s privacy laws.
The order, made by Italy’s Data Protection Authority, states that ChatGPT users aren’t given any information about the collection and use of their data, and that there’s no “legal underpinning” for that data collection, which it says is used to train ChatGPT. It also says that testing has shown that information provided by ChatGPT “does not always match factual circumstances”—which is true, chatbots are prone to bullshitting—and that while the terms of service limits its use to people over the age of 13, there’s no age verification system in place.
The regulatory body also made note of a “data breach” that occurred on March 20, which it said affected “users’ conversations and information on payments by subscribers.” OpenAIacknowledged the issueon March 24, saying it took the system offline “due to a bug in an open-source library which allowed some users to see titles from another active user’s chat history.”
“It’s also possible that the first message of a newly-created conversation was visible in someone else’s chat history if both users were active around the same time,” OpenAI said.
Italy is the first country in the West to ban ChatGPT, although as theBBCnotes, it’s already blocked in other countries including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Italy may share some of the same reasons for blocking it as those countries, as it is currently governed by a coalition of right-wing and far-right parties—the sort who might take issue with public access to some “factual” datapoints that paint it in an unflattering light. But Italy is far from alone in having concerns about the rapid growth of ChatGPT and other AI applications.
A group of artificial intelligence experts, industry leaders, and Elon Musk recently published anopen lettercalling for a six-month pause on training AIs more powerful than GPT-4, which has been dismissed in some quarters as at least partially a publicity stunt. But other agencies are taking more concrete steps: TheNew York City Department of Education, for instance, said in January that it would restrict access to the software from school networks and devices, andGetty Imageshas banned the upload and sale of any AI-generated images. TheEuropean Consumer Organizationhas also called for an investigation into ChatGPT technology, and Ireland’s Data Protection Commission told the BBC that it’s reaching out to the Italian regulator for more information on its reasons for the ban, presumably with an eye toward formulating its own policies and restrictions.
But while there’s obvious (and understandable) nervousness about the explosive development of AI and their potential to wreak havoc in all sorts of unpredictable ways, it doesn’t seem likely that it will slow down development of the software, at least in the short term. In January, Microsoft announced plans to invest$10 billioninto Open AI, andGoogleannounced its own ChatGPT-like chatbot, called Bard, in February. Regulation is absolutely called for and further bans are almost certainly coming, but AI development, for good or ill, is here to stay.
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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill.Lotsof Henry Cavill.
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