Italy’s privacy watchdog has temporarily banned the popular artificial intelligence service ChatGPT made by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, as policymakers across the world seek to respond to the rise of AI products.
The nation’s data protection authority said on Friday it would block access to the chatbot in Italy, while it examines the US company’s collection of personal information during a recent cyber security breach among other issues.
The move comes as AI experts and ethicists sound the alarm about the enormous amounts of data that services such as ChatGPT consume from tens of millions of users around the world, raising concerns about how companies may jeopardise their privacy and safety.