On Friday, the Privacy Guarantor, Italy’s personal data protection authority, announced that it has started investigation against OpenAI, the American organization that deals with the development and research in the field of artificial intelligence. The investigation is due to an alleged illegal collection of personal data of Italian users by ChatGPT, the popular OpenAI chatbot which, thanks to artificial intelligence, is able to simulate conversations by responding to sentences written or spoken by users. .

The privacy guarantor noted “the lack of information for users and all interested parties whose data is collected by OpenAI, but above all the absence of a legal basis justifying the massive collection and storage of personal data, in the purpose of “training” the algorithms underlying the operation of the platform”. For this reason, he ordered a temporary limitation of the processing of Italian user data by OpenAI, which could therefore now block the registration of new users in Italy for the use of ChatGPT. The Guarantor also specified that OpenAI must communicate within 20 days “the measures taken to implement what is requested, under penalty of a fine of up to 20 million euros or up to 4% of the global annual turnover”.