ChatGPT Blocked In Italy Due To Suspected Breach Of Data Collection Rules: Report

Italy's data protection agency has opened ChatGPT probe over privacy concerns due to a suspected breach of data collection rules.

OpenAI's viral artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT has been blocked in Italy.

OpenAI's viral artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT has been blocked in Italy, the media has reported. Italy's data protection agency has opened ChatGPT probe over privacy concerns due to a suspected breach of data collection rules, news agency Reuters reported on Friday.

The country's data protection watchdog has also accused ChatGPT of failing to check the age of its users, which should be reserved for people aged 13 and above. The agency said it had provisionally restricted chatbot's use of Italian users' personal data, the Reuters report added.

The Italian Data Protection Authority said that the decision "with immediate effect" will result in "the temporary limitation of the processing of Italian user data vis-a-vis OpenAI."

Italy's privacy watchdog has said it will immediately block and investigate OpenAI, the US-based company behind the viral AI tool, from processing the data of Italian users. The order is temporary until the company respects the EU's landmark privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

It should be noted that calls to suspend new ChatGPT releases and investigate its developer OpenAI over a range of risks for privacy, cybersecurity and disinformation are increasing. New Twitter boss and tech billionaire Elon Musk and dozens of AI experts this week called for a pause to updates of ChatGPT.

Consumer advocacy group BEUC also called on March 30 for EU and national authorities including data protection watchdogs to investigate ChatGPT, says a report by Politico.

It should be noted that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, recently experienced an incident in which certain users' payment information may have been exposed due to a bug. The company took ChatGPT offline to fix the issue. The bug was in an open-source library called "redis-py," which allowed some users to view titles from another active user's chat history. It was also possible for the first message of a newly-created conversation to be visible in someone else's chat history if both users were active around the same time.

Also, cyber intelligence firm CloudSEK revealed that cybercriminals are using ChatGPT's popularity to distribute malware via Facebook advertisements by hijacking Facebook accounts. CloudSEK's investigation uncovered 13 Facebook pages with over 500,000 followers, some of which were hijacked as early as February this year, and are being used to disseminate the malware via Facebook ads.