ChatGPT is unbanned in Italy

ChatGPT is no longer banned in Italy, its owner OpenAI announced Friday.

Italy’s data-protection authority imposed a ban on the artificial intelligence chatbot in late March, citing privacy concerns. It became the first Western nation to block the bot.

OpenAI announced a number of changes related to privacy that it said “addressed or clarified” the issues and allowed ChatGPT to go back online.

It includes:

• A new article explaining how ChatGPT collects and uses data to train its algorithm.
• A new form for users in the European Union that allows them to object to OpenAI using their personal data to train the models.
• Increased visibility for its privacy policy and the opt-out form.
• A tool to verify users’ ages in Italy.

OpenAI said in a statement that it is exciting to have its Italian users back and that “we remain dedicated to protecting their privacy.”

The question of privacy has been central to the debate surrounding the rapid development of popular bots like ChatGPT.

When it first banned the service, the Italian regulator said the company had no legal basis for collecting and storing people’s personal data “for the purpose of ‘training’ the algorithm” of the chatbot. It gave ChatGPT’s 20 days to respond to how the app plans to comply with EU privacy laws.

This week, ChatGPT rolled out the ability for any user to restrict OpenAI from using their data to train their models. In doing so, the users will also not be able to access their chat histories.