Italy’s Garante Welcomes Back ChatGPT After Company Addresses Agency Complaints

Updated: 29 April 2023

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OpenAI’s much-publicized ChatGPT has finally been legalized again in Italy. The Italian data protection authority, also known as the Garante, had temporarily restricted the use of the Chatbot on its turf citing issues on how the AI works.

Garante Concerned With Privacy Of Italian Users

The Garante, which is the name for Italy’s data protection authority, had at the start of April restricted the use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in its territory.

This received widespread backlash from several users. However, the European nation stuck to its guns and now its decision is paying off.

According to a recent report, the Italian data regulator has welcomed back the chatbot.

Italy welcomes back ChatGPT https://t.co/2aNdgzBJaS pic.twitter.com/yGP8Sc7AOb

— Pietro Schirano (@skirano) April 28, 2023

An agency spokesperson said the decision was made after OpenAI made some changes to its mode of operations.

Garante had earlier stated that its decision to stop users from accessing the chatbot was due to its concerns about users’ privacy.

Given this, the data agency launched an investigation into the suspected breach of privacy.

ChatGPT is now available in Italy again ??

— Logan.GPT (@OfficialLoganK) April 28, 2023

However, OpenAI, which is supported by Microsoft, has now made its privacy policy publicly accessible to users before registration.

The company also said it has implemented a tool for age verification in a bid to weed out users who are below the constitutionally recognized age of 18.

The Garante had claimed that the AI application had failed to cross-check and verify the age of ChatGPT’s users who are supposed to be aged 13 or above.

OpenAI has also created a new form that will be filled out by users restricting the company from leveraging their personal detail in training their AI software.

While this has been welcome by Italian authorities, the regulator has said that it will continue its fact-finding activities via the European data protection board to ensure no loopholes are left untouched.

OpenAi, meanwhile, has continued its collaboration with the Garante in order to ensure compliance.

The spokesperson for OpenAI appreciated Garante’s cooperative approach and expressed a willingness to engage in ongoing constructive discussions to ensure maximum satisfaction by both parties.

After Italy became the 1st country to ban ChatGPT, ChatGPT made the trip out to meet Italian Prime Minister @GiorgiaMeloni. Sometimes we just need to sit down and talk. #ChatGPT #GPT4 #AI @OpenAI @WonderDynamics vid by @JacopoDeGiu_ pic.twitter.com/WMLyMC4BZc

— Roger James Hamilton (@rogerhamilton) April 27, 2023

The privacy and security of data are of increasing concern for regulators and consumers as well.

EU Concerned About ChatGPT Creates AI Taskforce

Governments worldwide are taking action to ensure that personal data is collected and processed ethically and legally.

Given this, many companies are responding with a variety of solutions to ensure that their customers’ data are kept safe and secure.

The Europe Privacy Watchdog European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has set up a task force on human-like intelligence software like ChatGPT.

This move was followed closely after Italy had earlier banned the operation in its country. According to the task force, its objective solely lies in ensuring that proper oversight is maintained in the fast-growing industry.

Meanwhile, OpenAI’s AI software has sparked a form of global AI arms race. So far, close rivals like Google have launched their own AI chatbot.

Called Bard, the search engine giant recently announced in a blog post that its AI bot can now help its users code.

According to the company, with its AI software tool, users can complete tasks for programming and development tasks for as many as 20 programming languages.

OpenAI’s top sponsor Microsoft has not also been standing idly by. According to the software giant, it will also add OpenAI’s software to its lineup of office tools including Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and Outlook.

Google and Microsoft have not been the only two companies eyeing the Ai goldmine.

Others like customer relationship management (CRM) service provider Salesforce have launched their own AI tool called EinsteinGPT.

Also, e-commerce giant Amazon is working on its own Generative AI and large language model (LLM) program called Bedrock.

With AI tools seeing remarkable growth in the last six months, businesses are becoming more reliant on this human-like intelligence to help fast-track company growth and boost customer retention.