Description
Italy's competitiveness will suffer compared to its European Union peers if the popular ChatGPT chatbot is not reactivated soon, Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini said on Tuesday. Microsoft-backed OpenAI took ChatGPT offline in Italy on Friday after the national data protection agency raised concerns about possible privacy violations and failing to verify that users were older than 13. Italy's data authority, also known as Guarantor, said it would hold a videoconference meeting Wednesday night with OpenAI representatives, after the company expressed its willingness to cooperate.
"It is a work tool that many young people, many companies, many start-ups used and I hope they can use it again as soon as possible, because otherwise Italy will have a gap with all the other European countries," Salvini said. has said.
ALSO READ: Why is ChatGPT not available in Italy, Russia, China and North Korea?
Speaking to the Foreign Press Association in Rome, he said he respected the independence of Italy's data regulator and hoped the European Commission would step in to tackle the problem at the EU level.
Generative artificial intelligence, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, relies on algorithms to produce remarkably human responses to text queries based on analysis of large volumes of data, some of which may pertain to Internet users.
Privacy regulators in France and Ireland have contacted their Italian counterparts for more information about their investigation, and Germany could follow in Italy's footsteps, Germany's data protection commissioner told the Handelsblatt newspaper on Monday.
Salvini previously called Italy's restrictions on ChatGPT services "disproportionate."
"If only one (EU) country of the 27 has made this decision, the other 26 are distracted, tolerant and indifferent, or clearly there has been too much zeal," the minister said Tuesday.
