PARIS — France’s Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he thinks artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT doesn’t respect privacy laws, but argued against banning it, in an interview with La Tribune.
“The Italian [data protection authority] first wonders whether ChatGPT complies with the GDPR. In my opinion, it does not. OpenAI [the company behind the chatbot] will probably have to make adjustments to its product, because the data processing for users is problematic,” he said.
Asked whether France should follow the Italian regulator’s example and block the platform from operating, the minister replied: “No.”
Barring the chatbot from offering services in France would not be up to the French government but rather up to data protection authority CNIL to decide. In Italy, ChatGPT was ordered last week by the privacy regulator to temporarily stop processing Italian users’ personal data over alleged violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). France’s CNIL has already received at least two complaints on the grounds of privacy violations, L’Informé reported.
Earlier this week, OpenAI told the Italian privacy regulator it would be more transparent about how it uses personal data for its AI chatbot and improve mechanisms for people to request a correction or deletion of their data.