Italian Deputy Prime Minister: The blockade of ChatGPT is excessive and should be lifted as soon as possible

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has said that he believes the country’s data protection agency’s ban on ChatGPT is “excessive”. On March 31, Italy’s personal data protection authority announced a ban on the use of the chatbot platform ChatGPT, citing instances of user conversation data and payment service payment information being lost. In addition, ChatGPT did not inform users about the collection and processing of their information and lacked legal basis for collecting and storing large amounts of personal information. OpenAI subsequently stated that it had disabled ChatGPT for Italian users in response to the authorities’ request.

Salvini posted a statement on Instagram saying that new technologies bring significant changes, risks, and opportunities, and regulating them through regulatory agencies and legislators is correct. However, preventing or damaging “the work of those engaged in business, research, and innovation” is wrong. He said that OpenAI was willing to cooperate with authorities and hoped that ChatGPT would be restored as soon as possible. He pointed out that many online services have privacy issues but have not been blocked. He called the decision to block ChatGPT due to privacy concerns “hypocritical”.

However, since Italy’s data protection agency is independent, its decision to block ChatGPT may not be easily changed.