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OpenAI’s regulatory troubles are only just beginning

The European Union’s fight with ChatGPT is a glance into what’s to come for AI services.

OpenAI managed to appease Italian data authorities and lift the country’s effective ban on ChatGPT last week, but its fight against European regulators is far from over.

Earlier this year, OpenAI’s popular and controversial ChatGPT chatbot hit a big legal snag: an effective ban in Italy. The Italian Data Protection Authority (GPDP) accused OpenAI of violating EU data protection rules, and the company agreed to restrict access to the service in Italy while it attempted to fix the problem. On April 28th, ChatGPT returned to the country, with OpenAI lightly addressing GPDP’s concerns without making major changes to its service — an apparent victory.

The GPDP has said it “welcomes” the changes ChatGPT made. However, the firm’s legal issues — and those of companies building similar chatbots — are likely just beginning. Regulators in several countries are investigating how these AI tools collect and produce information, citing a range of concerns from companies’ collection of unlicensed training data to chatbots’ tendency to spew misinformation. In the EU, they’re applying the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), one of the world’s strongest legal privacy frameworks, the effects of which will likely reach far outside Europe. Meanwhile, lawmakers in the bloc are putting together a law that will address AI specifically — likely ushering in a new era of regulation for systems like ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is one of the most popular examples of generative AI — a blanket term covering tools that produce text, image, video, and audio based on user prompts. The service reportedly became one of the fastest-growing consumer applications in history after reaching 100 million monthly active users just two months after launching in November 2022 (OpenAI has never confirmed these figures). People use it to translate text into different languages, write college essays, and generate code. But critics — including regulators — have highlighted ChatGPT’s unreliable output, confusing copyright issues, and murky data protection practices.

Italy was the first country to make a move. On March 31st, it highlighted four ways it believed OpenAI was breaking GDPR: allowing ChatGPT to provide inaccurate or misleading information, failing to notify users of its data collection practices, failing to meet any of the six possible legal justifications for processing personal data, and failing to adequately prevent children under 13 years old using the service. It ordered OpenAI to immediately stop using personal information collected from Italian citizens in its training data for ChatGPT.

No other country has taken such action. But since March, at least three EU nations — Germany, France, and Spain — have launched their own investigations into ChatGPT. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Canada is evaluating privacy concerns under its Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has even established a dedicated task force to help coordinate investigations. And if these agencies demand changes from OpenAI, they could affect how the service runs for users across the globe.

Source : https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/5/23709833/openai-chatgpt-gdpr-ai-regulation-europe-eu-italy

OpenAI previews business plan for ChatGPT, launches new privacy controls

Image Credits: STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP / Getty Images

OpenAI says that it plans to introduce a new subscription tier for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot, tailored to the needs of enterprise customers.

Called ChatGPT Business, OpenAI describes the forthcoming offering as “for professionals who need more control over their data as well as enterprises seeking to manage their end users.”

“ChatGPT Business will follow our API’s data usage policies, which means that end users’ data won’t be used to train our models by default,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post published today. “We plan to make ChatGPT Business available in the coming months.”

OpenAI previously telegraphed that it was exploring additional paid plans for ChatGPT as the service quickly grows. (The first subscription tier, ChatGPT Plus, launched in February and is priced at $20 per month.) According to one source, ChatGPT is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January just two months after launch — making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history.

Exploring potential new lines of revenue, OpenAI launched plug-ins for ChatGPT in March, which extended the bot’s functionality by granting it access to third-party knowledge sources and databases, including the web.

Despite controversy and several bans, ChatGPT has proven to be a publicity win for OpenAI, attracting major media attention and spawning countless memes on social media. But it’s a pricey service to run. According to OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, ChatGPT’s operating expenses are “eye-watering,” amounting to a few cents per chat in total compute costs.

Beyond ChatGPT Business, OpenAI announced today a new feature that allows all ChatGPT users to turn off chat history. Conversations started when chat history is disabled won’t be used to train and improve OpenAI’s models and won’t appear in the history sidebar, OpenAI says. But they will be retained for 30 days and reviewed “when needed to monitor for abuse.”

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/25/openai-previews-business-plan-for-chatgpt-launches-new-privacy-controls/

Italy bans ChatGPT over privacy concerns

Italy’s data-protection authority imposed a ban on ChatGPT, citing privacy concerns, and opened an investigation into OpenAI, the U.S. company behind the artificial intelligence application, over a suspected breach of data collection rules.

It is the first Western country to block the advanced chatbot, according to the BBC.

The regulator said that the company has no legal basis to justify collecting and storing people’s personal data “for the purpose of ‘training’ the algorithms” of the chatbot.

Earlier this week the European Union’s law enforcement agency Europol expressed concern about the spread of disinformation when data through the app is processed inaccurately, Reuters reported.

The Italian ban order is temporary — until OpenAI complies with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, a privacy law that protects individuals’ fundamental rights to data protection.

ChatGPT suffered a data breach last week where it exposed the conversations and payment information of a small fraction of ChatGPT Plus subscribers, Italian authorities said. They also accused ChatGPT of failing to check the age of its users: Only people above the age of 13 are supposed to be allowed to access the chatbot.

Italy’s ban comes days after experts called for a stop to updates of ChatGPT and the development of new apps similar to the artificial intelligence tool, fearing that they could pose irreparable harm.

The app reached 100 million monthly active users two months after it launched in November, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to Reuters.

Semafor reached out to OpenAI for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Source : https://www.semafor.com/article/03/31/2023/chatgpt-banned-italy-privacy-concerns