OpenAI Complies with Privacy Regulations; Italian ChatGPT Ban Lifted
OpenAI has resumed its ChatGPT services in Italy after complying with Garante privacy regulations as the EU AI Act progresses. The Italian Garante has acknowledged the steps taken by OpenAI to reconcile technology advancement with the rights of individuals, complying with European data protection legislation.
The resolution of this issue comes as the European Union moves closer to enacting the Artificial Intelligence Act, which aims to regulate AI technology. This legislation may impact generative AI tools like ChatGPT in the future.
Under the EU AI Act, AI technology would be classified by risk level. Tools that could impact human safety and rights would have to comply with stricter regulations and government oversight.
Legislative Hurdles AI Companies Face in the EU
Before ChatGPT gained 100 million users in two months, the European Commission proposed the EU Artificial Intelligence Act as a way to regulate the development of AI. Members of the European Parliament reportedly agreed to move the EU AI Act into the next stage of the legislative process this week.
A recent open letter from the Future of Life Institute (FLI) received over 27,000 signatures, including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and Yoshua Bengio. FLI urges all AI labs to pause AI development for six months.
Generative AI tools would have to disclose the use of copyrighted material in training data according to the EU AI Act. This would be particularly interesting given the pending lawsuits over open-sourced code and copyrighted art used in training data by GitHub Copilot and StableDiffision, among others.
AI companies will incur compliance costs to meet regulatory requirements. Larger companies will be able to absorb the additional costs or pass them along to users, potentially leading to fewer innovations by entrepreneurs and underfunded startups.
