Italy says it is temporarily blocking ChatGPT over data privacy concerns, the first Western country to take such action against the popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.

The country's Data Protection Authority said U.S. firm OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, had no legal basis to justify "the mass collection and storage of personal data for the purpose of 'training' the algorithms underlying the operation of the platform."

ChatGPT caused a global sensation when it was released last year for its ability to generate essays, songs, exams and even news articles from brief prompts.

But critics have long fretted that it was unclear where ChatGPT and its competitors got their data or how they processed it.

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Universities and some education authorities have banned the chatbot over fears that students could use it to write essays or cheat in exams.

And hundreds of experts and industry figures signed an open letter this week calling for a pause in the development of powerful AI systems, arguing they posed "profound risks to society and humanity."

Lack of transparency

The letter was prompted by OpenAI's release earlier this month of GPT-4, a more powerful version of its chatbot, with even less transparency about its data sources.

OpenAI has not yet commented on the Italian decision.

The Italian authority imposed a "temporary limitation of the processing of Italian user data" by OpenAI and said it had launched an investigation. As well as a lack of legal basis for data collection, the authority also highlighted a lack of clarity over whose data was being collected.

It said wrong answers given by the chatbot suggested data was not being handled properly, and accused the firm of exposing children to "absolutely unsuitable answers." The watchdog further referenced a data breach on March 20 where user conversations and payment information were compromised – a problem the firm blamed on a bug.

Nello Cristianini, an AI academic from Bath University in England, said securing user data and enforcing age limits were easy to fix. But the other two accusations were more problematic – that the model is trained on personal data that is gathered without consent and then not treated properly.

"It is not clear how these can be fixed anytime soon," he said.

The company has been given 20 days to respond and could face a fine of €20 million ($21.7 million) or up to 4 percent of annual revenue.

The runaway success of ChatGPT garnered OpenAI a multibillion-dollar deal with Microsoft, which uses the technology in its Bing search engine and other programs.

It also sparked a gold rush among other tech firms and venture capitalists, with Google rushing out its own chatbot and investors pouring cash into all manner of AI projects.

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