Germany requires ChatGPT to respect European law
Introduction
The pressure is mounting on the fastest growing web application in history (1 million registered users in just five days). Last Monday, Germany and the EU asked ChatGPT’s parent company (OpenAI) to comment on data protection by 11 June 2023.
What happened?
ChatGPT will criticised, especially in the EU, for not transparently following the data protection regulation GDPR. As we know, Italy has already reacted as a pioneer and stopped the usage of ChatGPT in its own country.
The most important points of criticism are:
- Lack of policies on data protection, especially consent of user data.
- Processing and using user input, including referring to individuals without their consent and using the data for AI training purposes without permission.
- Enforcement of data subject rights
- Handling of entered user data regarding the purpose and duration of the storage (name, e-mail, telephone number) and their forwarding to third parties without notification
Also Germany has launched a data protection inquiry over ChatGPT, following the ban of ChatCPT in Italy. Together with the regional data protection authorities in Europe the EU have compiled a questionnaire for OpenAI, requesting information on GDPR compliance and a data protection impact assessment. The aim is to ensure that ChatGPT respects European data protection law.
If the EU does not receive a positive response by 11 June, ChatGPT is likely to be restricted in Germany and other EU countries too.
In order to be able to solve the problem quickly, the European Union’s central data supervisory authority has set up a task force. Countries like France, Spain and Italy are already in contact with OpenAI to find a solution.
Remarks
If you liked this article, feel free to forward it to your colleagues or share it on social networks. If you are an expert in this field and would like to criticize or endorse the article, kindly send me a private message. I’m happy to respond.
About the author
Ralf Emanuel is a passionate entrepreneur. He founded two companies in the IT industry after managing large-scale IT projects since 1995. After developing and operating several critical enterprise applications in the tourism and finance sectors, he now specializes in IT consulting, focusing on digital transformation, cybersecurity, and blockchain while advising companies on their strategic direction.
