ChatGPT banned by regulator in Italy, which says there's no legal basis for using personal data to train the chatbot following data breach

• Italy's data protection regulator announced a ban on ChatGPT, and investigation into OpenAI.

• It cited a March 20 data breach, and no "legal basis" for using people's data to train the chatbot.

• The landmark order follows an open letter from over 1,000 people calling on AI companies to pause development.

ChatGPT has been banned in Italy over privacy concerns, in a landmark order against the major AI chatbot, the country's privacy regulator announced Friday.

Italy's national data protection agency (DPA) said it would block access to ChatGPT immediately, and is starting an investigation into its creator, OpenAI.

It added that the restriction was temporary, until the company can abide by the European Union's data protection laws, known as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

According to an Insider translation of the Italian press release announcing the news, the DPA said that there is no legal basis to justify "the mass collection and storage of personal data" used to train the algorithms behind ChatGPT. The regulator also alleged that such data was processed inaccurately.

The Italian authority also cited a data breach on March 20, where a bug allowed some ChatGPT users to see the titles of other users' conversations. Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO, called it a "significant issue" in a tweet two days later, adding: "We feel awful about this."