The European Union has brought old legislation to deal with generative AI in response to safety concerns raised by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“In absence of regulations, the only thing governments can do is to apply existing rules,” Massimiliano Cimnaghi, a European data governance expert at consultancy BIP said.
“If it’s about protecting personal data, they apply data protection laws, if it’s a threat to safety of people, there are regulations that have not been specifically defined for AI, but they are still applicable.” he added.
In April, Europe’s national privacy watchdogs formed a task group to address issues with ChatGPT after the service was pulled offline by Italian regulator Garante, who accused OpenAI of breaking the EU’s GDPR, a broad privacy policy implemented in 2018.
ChatGPT was reinstated when the US company promised to install age verification features and allow European users to opt out of having their information used to train the AI model.
According to a source close to Garante, the agency will begin looking into other generative AI tools more generally. In April, data protection authorities in France and Spain opened investigations into OpenAI’s compliance with privacy rules.