OpenAI has came across regulatory hurdles in Italy as Italian data protection watchdog has issued warning to GEDI publisher about potential data risks with the AI research tool.
Earlier in September, GEDI Gruppo Editoriale S.p.A., formerly known as Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso S.p.A., which is an Italian media organization, announced a strategic alliance with Elon Musk founded artificial intelligence research organization.
The core purpose of the partnership was to bring Italian-language content from GEDI’s news portfolio to help train and improve OpenAI’s products, a step to train ChatGPT models on Italian content.
However, two months after this collaboration, Italian watchdogs sounded alarm on significant risk of data leak as under the deal, ChatGPT users will be able to access all sort of GEDI’s publications, including content, links, and attributed quotes, reported Reuters.
"The digital archives of newspapers contain the stories of millions of people, with information, details and even extremely sensitive personal data that cannot be licensed without due care for use by third parties to train artificial intelligence," the regulator said in a statement.
The statement further read, "If GEDI, on the basis of the agreement signed with OpenAI, were to disclose to the latter the personal data contained in its archive, it could violate EU regulation, with all the consequences, including those of a sanctioning nature."
Responding to the regulatory concerns, GEDI stated, "The project has not been launched yet therefore no editorial content has been made available to OpenAI at the moment and will not be until the reviews under way are completed.”
They also added that "a constructive dialogue can be quickly opened to protect the interests and rights of all the parties involved.”
For the unversed, GEDI publishes daily newspapers la Repubblica and La Stampa in Italy.
