We are talking a lot about ChatGPT these days and the reality is that it is not for less. Artificial intelligence has a disruptive power at an economic and social level. Entire countries have started to protect themselves and millions of citizens have started to get informed.
Is artificial intelligence bad? This question has many edges and there is no valid answer. It’s a “it depends” that would cover half of the Internet. The important thing to know in this news is that in Italy ChatGPT, the most famous tool in the AI world, has been banned.
Why has Italy banned ChatGPT?
Although ChatGPT has already been banned for months by authoritarian governments such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, Italy is the first Western democracy to block the chatbot.
The decision to ban the software came after Garante, Italy’s data protection watchdog, accused OpenAI of improperly collecting and storing Italians’ data and consequently breaching GDPR regulations.
There are also concerns that the software may expose minors to harmful content due to a lack of proper age verification procedures.
Authorities have given OpenAI 20 days to resolve these issues, after which it will be fined up to 4% of its annual revenue, the BBC reports.
OpenAI rejected such accusations, stating that it is committed to protecting people’s privacy by working to train its AI systems to minimize the collection of personal data.
You close a door and open a window
Italians have turned to VPN services following the decision by the country’s data protection authority to ban ChatGPT on privacy grounds.
Since the ban was implemented on April 1, PureVPN, a leading VPN provider, has seen an unusual increase in traffic to its website from Italy.
The advanced AI software developed by U.S.-based OpenAI and backed by Microsoft managed to accumulate more than 100 million users since its launch in November last year.
“Since Italians can’t access ChatGPT, many of them are turning to VPNs to bypass the block,” the VPN provider commented in a blog post a few hours ago.
Short for Virtual Private Network, a VPN is security software that encrypts all data leaving a device while spoofing the actual location of people’s IP addresses.
The latter ability is exactly what a ChatGPT VPN is for here.
By connecting to one of its international servers located where ChatGPT is not blocked, users in Italy and other places where the software is banned can access the advanced chatbot in a matter of seconds.
Some of the links added in the article are part of affiliate campaigns and may represent benefits for Softonic.
