The decision by Italy’s data protection authority to block access to Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT last Friday, citing alleged privacy violations, may have kicked off a trend of European countries banning the AI chatbot.
Reuters reports a spokesperson for the German Federal Data Protection Commissioner told the German-language business newspaper Handelsblatt that temporarily blocking the use of ChatGPT in Germany due to data security concerns could be possible.
“In principle, such action is also possible in Germany,” Ulrich Kelber said. He mentioned that data security issues could be subject to state jurisdiction but did not elaborate on immediate plans to ban ChatGPT.
Kelber said German officials requested further information from Italy on its ban. Officials in France and Ireland have already contacted Italy about their findings.
“We are following up with the Italian regulator to understand the basis for their action and we will coordinate with all EU data protection authorities in relation to this matter,” said a spokesperson for Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner.
On Friday, the Italian National Authority for Personal Data Protection said ChatGPT violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation in multiple ways, including unlawfully processing people’s data and failing to prevent minors from accessing the AI chatbot.
Calls to suspend new ChatGPT-4 have been increasing by the week. Last week, the tech ethics organization Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, asserting the new chatbot violates federal consumer protection law and asked for future chatbot releases to the public to be halted.
The FTC complaint comes days after Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio and others signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause of new AI chatbots more powerful than ChatGPT-4.
As of writing this, Italian users don’t have access to ChatGPT.
A European crackdown on AI chatbots is in progress.
