The Italian authorities announced on Friday their decision to block the chatbot ChatGPT, accused of not respecting the legislation on personal data and of not having a system to verify the age of minor users.
This is a first in the western world. Italy blocked artificial intelligence ChatGPT on Friday (March 31 ) over data usage concerns, two months after banning another program marketed as a "virtual friend".
In a press release, the Italian Personal Data Protection Authority warns that its decision has "immediate effect" and accuses the chatbot of not respecting European regulations and of not verifying the age of minor users.
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This decision will result in "the temporary limitation of the processing of Italian user data vis-à-vis OpenAI", the company behind the application, according to the document.
The Italian institution points out that ChatGPT "suffered on March 20 a loss of data concerning user conversations and information relating to the payment of subscribers to the paid service".
ChatGPT appeared in November and was quickly taken over by users impressed with its ability to clearly answer difficult questions, write sonnets or write computer code. Funded by the computer giant Microsoft, which has added it to several of its services, it is sometimes presented as a potential competitor to the Google search engine.
Data
After initial reports, OpenAI briefly discontinued the service, then acknowledged a bug in a now-resolved third-party tool that affected 1.2 % of its subscribers and an indefinite number of free users.
The authority also criticizes him for "the absence of an information note for users, whose data is collected by OpenAI, but above all the absence of a legal basis justifying the collection and mass storage of personal data, for the purpose of "training" the algorithms running the platform
Additionally, while the bot is aimed at people over the age of 13, it "emphasizes that the lack of any filter to verify the age of users exposes minors to absolutely non-compliant responses by relative to their level of development.
The Cnil, the French policeman for personal data, "has not received a complaint and has no similar procedure in progress", she indicated in a reaction to AFP.
However, she has approached her Italian counterpart "in order to discuss the findings that have been made" and aims to "clarify the legal framework in the coming months".
Replika app banned
The Italian institution had blocked at the beginning of February for similar reasons the Replika application, which offers to chat with a tailor-made avatar. Some users had complained of receiving too daring messages and images, close to sexual harassment.