Italy's data protection authority announced on Monday that it has notified OpenAI about the violation of data protection rules by its artificial intelligence chatbot application, ChatGPT.
Garante, the Italian watchdog, which is among the most active in assessing AI platform compliance with the European Union's data privacy regulations, briefly banned ChatGPT last year due to alleged breaches of EU privacy rules. Following this, the regulator initiated a probe, and it has now concluded that there are indications of one or more potential data privacy violations, as stated in an official statement.
The authority has given Microsoft (MSFT.O)-backed OpenAI a 30-day period to present defense arguments. The investigation will consider the findings of a European task force composed of national privacy watchdogs.
OpenAI has not yet provided a comment when contacted by Reuters.
Italy was the first Western European country to take action against ChatGPT, a rapidly developed AI system that has drawn attention from lawmakers and regulators. The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented in 2018, empowers authorities to impose fines of up to 4% of a company's global turnover for violations.
In December, EU lawmakers and governments reached provisional terms for regulating AI systems, including those like ChatGPT, marking a step toward establishing comprehensive rules for governing this technology.