I think that GDPR in cases of blatant noncompliance requires the site to just be blocked until the rules are respected; that said, OpenAI’s response certainly has a lot of “nuh-huh, it’s MY TOY and if you don’t like me I’M TAKING IT HOME WITH ME” energy. They’re probably hoping that backlash from Italian users forces the hand of the watchdog.
Some of the problems may be fixed simply by the ChatGPT website doing the minimal required effort for compliance (they don’t even have a typical “your data will be stored” opt out banner, FFS! Am I to believe they use no cookies? Yeah). But if they go deep into the “how do I delete my personal data if it’s been used in training the model?” question, and the answer is “well, we don’t really know per se… it might be somewhere in there… but then again, it might not...”, that’s pretty much a deal breaker.
Honestly, if these sort of legal challenges forced the tech itself to evolve in a direction where it’s more modular and interpretable so that you can guarantee it won’t break the law, that would be fantastic; it’s exactly the kind of thing we need to be done, and “tons of lawyer fees and lost customers” are a strong economic incentive to do it. That said, right now OpenAI’s API is still available in Italy, no problem. Only the ChatGPT website itself is down.
I think that GDPR in cases of blatant noncompliance requires the site to just be blocked until the rules are respected; that said, OpenAI’s response certainly has a lot of “nuh-huh, it’s MY TOY and if you don’t like me I’M TAKING IT HOME WITH ME” energy. They’re probably hoping that backlash from Italian users forces the hand of the watchdog.
Some of the problems may be fixed simply by the ChatGPT website doing the minimal required effort for compliance (they don’t even have a typical “your data will be stored” opt out banner, FFS! Am I to believe they use no cookies? Yeah). But if they go deep into the “how do I delete my personal data if it’s been used in training the model?” question, and the answer is “well, we don’t really know per se… it might be somewhere in there… but then again, it might not...”, that’s pretty much a deal breaker.
Honestly, if these sort of legal challenges forced the tech itself to evolve in a direction where it’s more modular and interpretable so that you can guarantee it won’t break the law, that would be fantastic; it’s exactly the kind of thing we need to be done, and “tons of lawyer fees and lost customers” are a strong economic incentive to do it. That said, right now OpenAI’s API is still available in Italy, no problem. Only the ChatGPT website itself is down.