German state regulators begin privacy inquiry into ChatGPT

State regulators in Germany have begun an investigation into ChatGPT’s compliance with GDPR laws, Agence France Presse said April 24.

German state launches ChatGPT inquiry

Marit Hansen, a commissioner for the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, said:

“We want to know if a data protection impact assessment has been carried out and if the data protection risks are under control.”

Regulators in the region expect a response from ChatGPT’s development company, OpenGPT, by June 11. It is unclear whether the inquiry will gain support from other regions.

Other EU countries have also taken action. Italy banned ChatGPT over privacy concerns in late March. Itality said that it could lift the ban if OpenAI meets its requirements, such as the addition of age verification and updates to the platform’s privacy policy.

Elsewhere, France and Spain are looking into the AI tool’s level of compliance.

Privacy is the core issue

Countries that are members of the EU enforce General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws. These rules aim to ensure that users have the right to access, change, and delete personal data — the latter of which is known as “the right to be forgotten.”

Because ChatGPT retrieves and displays data from various sources, it could be damaging to user privacy if personal data is accidentally harvested or shared by the system.

In fact, such incidents have already occurred multiple times, with OpenAI even going as far as to take ChatGPT offline during one privacy incident in March.

The news comes as crypto companies are beginning to leverage AI tools and chatbots. Visa said today that it is hiring a software engineer to work with AI and blockchain, while Binance has launched a user education chatbot named “Sensei.”

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