In comments released on Monday, the German commissioner for data protection suggested that Germany might block ChatGPT due to data security concerns, following Italy’s example.
On Friday, ChatGPT was taken offline in Italy by Microsoft-backed OpenAI after the national data agency briefly banned the chatbot and opened an investigation into a possible violation of privacy laws by the artificial intelligence programme.
Ulrich Kelber said, “In principle, such action is also possible in Germany,” adding that this would come under state authority. He did not, however, outline any such plans.
According to Kelber, Germany has asked Italy for more details regarding its prohibition. The Italian data regulator was also contacted, according to privacy watchdogs from France and Ireland, to discuss its results.
After a cyber security breach last week resulted in people seeing snippets of other users’ ChatGPT conversations and their financial information, the Italian inquiry into OpenAI was started. It claimed that OpenAI failed to verify the legal age of ChatGPT members, who must be 13 or older.
The first Western nation to initiate legal action against an AI-powered chatbot is Italy. According to an email sent by OpenAI to one impacted customer and seen by the Financial Times, the exposed data for a nine-hour period included first and last names, billing addresses, credit card types, credit card expiration dates, and the last four digits of credit card numbers.