EU privacy watchdog sets up ChatGPT task force

PARIS 

The European Union’s central data regulator has said that it was forming a task force to help countries deal with wildly popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, ramping up the pressure on its U.S. maker OpenAI.    

Italy temporarily banned the program last month over allegations its data-gathering broke privacy laws, and France’s regulator said on April 13 that it had opened a formal procedure after receiving five complaints.    

Spain’s AEPD data protection agency also said it had opened an inquiry into the software and its US owner, saying that while it favoured AI development, “it must be compatible with personal rights and freedoms”.    

ChatGPT can generate essays, poems and conversations from the briefest of prompts, and has proved itself capable of passing some tough exams.     

But it has been dogged by concerns that its talents could lead to widespread cheating in schools, supercharge disinformation on the web and replace human workers.  

And the chatbot can only function if it is trained on vast datasets, raising concerns about where OpenAI gets its data and how that information is handled.    

French regulator CNIL, regarded as Europe’s most powerful, has opened a case after receiving five complaints.        

Under Europe’s data protection regulation (GDPR), such systems are obliged to provide accurate personal data as much as possible.