On Tuesday, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister, Matteo Salvini, stated that if the widely-used ChatGPT chatbot is not reactivated soon, Italy’s competitiveness will be negatively affected in comparison to its peers in the European Union.
On Friday, OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, deactivated ChatGPT in Italy due to concerns raised by the national data protection agency over possible privacy breaches, and for not verifying that users were aged 13 or older.
Garante, Italy’s data authority, is scheduled to have a video conference meeting with OpenAI’s representatives on Wednesday evening to discuss the concerns raised over ChatGPT. OpenAI expressed readiness to cooperate with the authority. Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini said that if ChatGPT is not reactivated soon, Italy’s competitiveness will be at risk compared to other European Union peers. Salvini added that ChatGPT is a valuable work tool used by many young people, companies, and startups.
At the Foreign Press Association in Rome, Salvini stated that he respected the independence of the Italian data regulator and expressed his hope that the European Commission would intervene at an EU level to address the issue.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which uses algorithms to generate human-like responses to text queries by analyzing large amounts of data, including some owned by internet users, has come under scrutiny by privacy regulators. France and Ireland have reached out to their counterparts in Italy to learn about its probe, and the German commissioner for data protection has told Handelsblatt newspaper that Germany may follow Italy’s lead.
On Tuesday, Salvini stated that the restrictions imposed by Italy on ChatGPT’s services were “disproportionate.” He further added that if only one country out of 27 has taken this action, then either the other 26 are uninterested, tolerant, or distracted, or there has been an excessive level of zeal.
