Italy becomes first country to ban ChatGPT over privacy concerns

MILAN – Italy has become the first country to ban ChatGPT, an artificial-intelligence chatbot developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, and launched an investigation over alleged violation of privacy rules. 

ChatGPT, which was launched in November 2022, is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response.

OpenAI has disabled ChatGPT in Italy after the Italian Data Protection Authority on Friday imposed a temporary ban on the chatbot. The authority has alleged the OpenAi of failing to check the age of ChatGPT's users who are supposed to be aged 13 or above.

ChatGPT has an "absence of any legal basis that justifies the massive collection and storage of personal data" to "train" the chatbot, Garante said.

The Italian government has given 20 days to the tech firm to submit its response as it could face a fine of over $21 million.

OpenAI said it has taken ChatGPT offline in Italy at the request of the Garante. However, it will be available in other parts of the world.

"We actively work to reduce personal data in training our AI systems like ChatGPT because we want our AI to learn about the world, not about private individuals," OpenAI added.

The services of the ChatGPT are also unavailable in China, Russia and parts of Africa as users from these region could not create OpenAI accounts.

ChatGPT is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after it was rolled out.