ChatGPT Back in Italy After Meeting Watchdog Demands

ChatGPT's maker said Friday that the artificial intelligence chatbot is available again in Italy after the company met the demands of regulators who temporarily blocked it over privacy concerns. From a report: OpenAI said it fulfilled a raft of conditions that the Italian data protection authority wanted satisfied by an April 30 deadline to have the ban on the AI software lifted. "ChatGPT is available again to our users in Italy," San Francisco-based OpenAI said by email. "We are excited to welcome them back, and we remain dedicated to protecting their privacy."

Last month, Italian watchdog, known as Garante, ordered OpenAI to temporarily stop processing Italian users' personal information while it investigated a possible data breach. The authority said it didn't want to hamper AI's development but emphasized the importance of following the European Union's strict data privacy rules. OpenAI said it "addressed or clarified the issues" raised by the watchdog. The measures include adding information on its website about how it collects and uses data used to train the algorithms that power ChatGPT, giving European Union users a new form they can use to object to having their data used for training, and adding a tool to verify users' ages when signing up.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

They want to make tools that they can sell everywhere, if Italy bans it on some basis what's to stop some other country from doing the same? Surely there's a line somewhere below which potential sales are too low to care, but clearly this is not where it is.

Re:Why did they even listen

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Whenever some pissant little country like Italy or France starts ordering around a tech company, the company's response should be to tell them to fuck off. Let them build a national firewall like Russia if they feel strongly about it. Italy has no authority over OpenAI given that they have no business presence in the country.

Here, I've fixed it for you:

Whenever some pissant little corporation like OpenAI or Google starts ordering around an entire country, the country's response should be to tell them to fuck off. OpenAI has no authority over Italy given that they have no democratic presence in the country.

If you believe in democratic government with responsibilities towards its citizens and their rights, that is.

Re: Why did they even listen

[Nadir]

They have no business presence in Italy? Do you know how the Internet works?

Re:

[Carlos Laviola]

ahem. [openai.com]

Re:

[pete6677]

Oh no, they might miss out on the 2-3 subscribers that they'd get from Italy! Ever been to Italy? They barely even use computers there.

Re:

[wsWfFLmnA5kkhy]

Whenever some pissant little country like Italy or France starts ordering around a tech company, the company's response should be to tell them to fuck off. Let them build a national firewall like Russia if they feel strongly about it. Italy has no authority over OpenAI given that they have no business presence in the country.

It may come as a shock to you, but in the first world we have laws to protect the citizen from corporations. In the third world, as America is, corps can dispose of citizens however they please.

Strict?

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Re: "...but emphasized the importance of following the European Union's strict data privacy rules." Strict? Seriously? They're not strict. They don't really stop much. The big tech companies love whining about any kind of regulation whatsoever. Don't repeat their rhetoric. The GDPR is weak and mostly ineffectual. It hasn't achieved much in the time since it was introduced. If anything, we need to consider outright bans on any and all personal data gathering, with exceptions carved out on rationally, sensibly argued cases, i.e. You can't just grab people's information in order to aggregate and sell it on for a profit, AKA data brokering. If a company wants your personal information, they can damn well ask you for it themselves for their own use only, and not for selling data or services to 3rd parties.

Re: Strict?

[Bobknobber]

âoeStrictâ from the perspective of Americans. Not sure how it is in other countries, but here regulations regarding data collection are lax and tech bros tend to be pseudo-libertarian types.
That said, I do agree we need much more stricter regulation on training sets. With the success of LLMs, it is quite likely companies will go to increasingly invasive lengths to collect user data for training. Itâ(TM)s why I find Dropbox adopting AI concerning: an entire archive ripe for LLM training.