The Italian Data Protection Authority on Friday announced that it had restricted the operation of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, over its violations regarding data collection.

The decision, which was sparked by the leak of personal data by ChatGPT on March 20, would lead to "temporary restrictions on processing of user data" in Italy by chatbot developer OpenAI, the regulator indicated.

On March 25, a data breach caused thousands of users of the intelligence application to be compromised due to a bug that was later identified by OpenAI. About 1.2% of subscribers were affected by the leak, the developer said, highlighting that the figure is "extremely low".

The authority mentioned that it had demanded that OpenAI informs about measures it would take to increase the protection of data whose breach carries a penalty of a fine of up to 20 million euros ($21.8 million) or 4% of the company's annual turnover.

ChatGPT gained popularity after its launch in November 2022, acquiring its first million users in less than a week.

In late January, Microsoft said it would invest "billions of dollars" in OpenAI. Earlier in March, OpenAI introduced a new multimodal AI model, GPT-4, capable of recognizing both text and images, as well as solving complex problems with greater accuracy.

On Thursday, UN spokesperson for the Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric said UN chief Antonio Guterres called ChatGPT worrying and urged businesses to make careful investments.

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