Won't stop developing AI, responds OpenAI to Italian ban on ChatGPT

OpenAI is planning to suggest measures to Italian government authorities on Thursday to resolve their concerns which led to the banning of its ChatGPT chatbot in the country last week, stated Italy's data protection authorities.

ChatGPT was taken offline by Microsoft Corp-backed OpenAI in Italy after it was temporarily restricted by Garante last week, which began an investigation into a suspected breach of privacy rules.

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Garante, the Italian agency, accused Microsoft Corp-backed OpenAI of not being able to check the age of people using ChatGPT and the "absence of any legal basis that justifies the massive collection and storage of personal data" to "train" the AI chatbot.

The ChatGPT maker said that it does not intend to pause the development of AI but also emphasised the importance of following and respecting the rules laid out by the authorities to protect the personal data of Italian and European citizens.

During a video conference late on Wednesday, OpenAI pledged that will incorporate more transparency in handling users' data and will verify the age of its users, said the authority. The conference was attended by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, among others.

The company stated that a document about measures to be taken, as per its requests, will be sent to Garante. The data authority stated that the proposals submitted by Open AI will be evaluated.

A blog post was published by OpenAI on Thursday, titled "Our approach to AI safety", which stated that it was working for the development of "nuanced policies against behaviour that represents a genuine risk to people".

"We don’t use data for selling our services, advertising, or building profiles of people. We use data to make our models more helpful for people. ChatGPT, for instance, improves by further training on the conversations people have with it. While some of our training data includes personal information that is available on the public internet, we want our models to learn about the world, not private individuals,” the company said.

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OpenAI added that personal information has been removed from its datasets wherever possible, and models have been fine-tuned to reject user prompts when such information is being asked and to respond to every user's requests to remove their data from its systems.

The ban imposed by Italy has increased the interest of Europe's other privacy regulators who are studying the need to impose harsher measures to rein in chatbots and whether such actions should be co-ordinated.

AI chatbot company Replika was also banned by Garante in February from using Italian users' personal data, citing risks to emotionally fragile people and minors.

(With inputs from agencies)

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