Germany looks south. Access to ChatGPT was blocked last week by Italy’s data protection regulator, so this technology cannot be used in that country (although there are ways to bypass the block). The German authorities have not yet started to close the door, but they have already asked their Italian counterparts for information as the debate rages in the country about whether such a measure is appropriate.
The only clue to this possibility came from Germany’s data protection commissioner, Ulrich Kelber, who admitted that his country could follow Italy. “In principle – he clarified – a similar procedure is also possible in Germany”. At the moment, everything is in the study and information gathering phase. In addition, the federal states also have competences in the matter.
At the outset, the federal government does not seem predisposed to blocking the use of AI in the country. The Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and Transport stated: “We don’t need to ban AI applications, what we need is to find ways to guarantee values ​​like democracy and transparency.” The head of department of this ministry pointed out that the future legal framework of the European Union for this technology will make Europe a “world pioneer of reliable AI”.
Another German federal ministry, the Ministry of the Interior, assured that it is “closely following” the information published by the media about the Italian blockade in application of the General Data Protection Regulation (RGPD) of the European Union.
The EU is also working towards this goal, which is processing a bill on artificial intelligence that should be concluded throughout this year. The urgency is much more urgent in a matter with such rapid evolution and diffusion among the population. It’s only been three weeks since GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest AI language model, was introduced, and already there are thousands of different applications for a multitude of fields.
The European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, Thierry Breton, explained to a French broadcaster on Monday that he intends to include in the future European law on AI the requirement that any product generated with this technology carry an identifying mark.
“It is an extremely important issue – warned Breton -; that’s why I’m promoting the Artificial Intelligence law, which is currently being debated in the European Parliament and should be voted on this month.” “Everything generated by AI will have to be marked as being made by artificial intelligence,” he concluded.
The European Commissioner hopes that the text can be voted on at the end of this month in the European Parliament. However, the implementation of EU regulations has generous deadlines, so it is possible that this new legal framework for AI will not be in place either this year or next.
At the moment, in Italy OpenAI has a little less than three weeks, since last week’s blocking, to demonstrate to the data protection authority that European legislation has not been violated. The company’s CEO, Sam Altman, said he believed his company complied with the European regulation and expressed his confidence in the idea of ​​being able to prove it.
For now, the company is refunding the amount paid by paid subscribers to ChatGPT. The paradox is that Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which uses GPT-4, can be used normally in Italy.
