This week, government agencies in countries including South Korea and Australia have blocked access to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek's new AI chatbot programme, mostly for government employees. Other countries, including the United States, have said they may also seek to block DeepSeek from government employees' mobile devices, according to media reports. All cite "security concerns" about the Chinese technology and a lack of clarity about how users' personal information is handled by the operator. Last month, DeepSeek made headlines after it caused share prices in US tech companies to plummet, after it claimed that its model would cost only a fraction of the money its competitors had spent on their own AI programmes to build. The news caused social media users to joke: "I can't believe ChatGPT lost its job to AI." Here's what we know about DeepSeek and why countries are banning it.

OpenAI says ChatGPT is once again available in Italy after it addressed a series of conditions set out by regulators. The Garante data protection authority wanted OpenAI to resolve several issues by the end of this month in order to lift a temporary ban on the chatbot. "ChatGPT is available again to our users in Italy," OpenAI told the Associated Press in a statement. "We are excited to welcome them back, and we remain dedicated to protecting their privacy." Italian regulators blocked ChatGPT in March over concerns that the AI's training methods and chatbot violated the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Access to the ChatGPT chatbot has been restored in Italy after its maker OpenAI "addressed or clarified" issues raised by Italy's data protection authority, Italian authorities and OpenAI have said. Microsoft Corp-backed OpenAI took ChatGPT offline in Italy last month after the country's Data Protection Authority, also known as Garante, temporarily banned the chatbot and launched a probe into the artificial intelligence application's suspected breach of privacy rules. The Italian Data Protection Authority described its action as provisional "until ChatGPT respects privacy". The watchdog said ChatGPT developer OpenAI had no legal basis to justify "the mass collection and storage of personal data for the purpose of'training' the algorithms underlying the operation of the platform". It further referenced a data breach on March 20 when user conversations and payment information were compromised, a problem the United States firm blamed on a bug.

Garante, the Italian data protection authority, apparently jumped the gun at the end of March when it imposed a temporary ban on ChatGPT, a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate texts that seem as if they were created by humans, and computer games. The watchdog was less concerned by the use of AI -- the simulation of human intelligence by computer systems -- than by breaches of data protection legislation. Garante then told the Microsoft Corp-backed company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, that it would have to be more transparent with its users about how their data were processed. It also said that the US company had to obtain permission from users if their data were to be used to further develop the software -- that is, to help it learn -- and that access to minors had to be filtered. In a press release, the Italian authority said that the ban would be lifted if OpenAI met these conditions by April 30.

OpenAI, the company behind the massively popular ChatGPT AI chatbot, has launched a bug bounty program in an attempt to ensure its systems are "safe and secure." To that end, it has partnered with the crowdsourced security platform Bugcrowd for independent researchers to report vulnerabilities discovered in its product in exchange for rewards ranging from "$200 for low-severity findings to up to $20,000 for exceptional discoveries." It's worth noting that the program does not cover model safety or hallucination issues, wherein the chatbot is prompted to generate malicious code or other faulty outputs. The company noted that "addressing these issues often involves substantial research and a broader approach." Other prohibited categories are denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, brute-forcing OpenAI APIs, and demonstrations that aim to destroy data or gain unauthorized access to sensitive information.

At the end of March, the Italian Data Protection Authority (the "Garante"), announced that OpenAI's fancy new ChatGPT software would imminently be blocked from use within the European nation over concerns that ChatGPT's training and function violate the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). On Wednesday, the Garante published a list of necessary steps OpenAI will have to take by the end of April if Italy is to lift its temporary limitation on the processing of its user data. "OpenAI will have to draft and make available, on its website, an information notice describing the arrangements and logic of the data processing required for the operation of ChatGPT along with the rights afforded to data subjects," the Garante announced. Additionally, Italian users must be shown said notice and will have to declare that they are over the age of 18 prior to the completion of their registrations. What's more, the company will be required to age gate the site to filter out users under the age of 18 by the end of September.

When OpenAI released GPT-3 in July 2020, it offered a glimpse of the data used to train the large language model. Millions of pages scraped from the web, Reddit posts, books, and more are used to create the generative text system, according to a technical paper. Scooped up in this data is some of the personal information you share about yourself online. This data is now getting OpenAI into trouble. On March 31, Italy's data regulator issued a temporary emergency decision demanding OpenAI stop using the personal information of millions of Italians that's included in its training data.

The Italian privacy watchdog mandated a ban on the popular chatbot ChatGPT and launched an investigation on its provider OpenAI for suspected breaches of EU data protection rules. Italy's Garante for the protection of personal data on Friday (31 March) accused the AI system of breaching the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and failing to implement age verification systems. The blocking of the site for Italian users is temporary and will last until the provider OpenAI respects the EU privacy framework when processing the personal data of Italian users. The Italian data protection authority has also initiated an investigation into the American tech company. Launched in November, ChatGPT has been notorious for its unprecedented ability to generate human-like text based on prompts.

Whereas the AI revolution is all the trend, there are real issues in regards to the unfold of misinformation and the way generative AIs like ChatGPT and Bard deal with person privateness. A lot in order that one western nation has now outright banned ChatGPT. The Italian information safety authority blocked ChatGPT with rapid impact on Friday. The regulator mentioned it might ban and examine OpenAI over privateness issues. Tens of millions of customers have used ChatGPT since its inception. Microsoft can be closely invested within the AI after backing OpenAI with billions of {dollars}.

OpenAI has taken ChatGPT offline in Italy after the government's Data Protection Authority on Friday temporarily banned the chatbot and launched a probe over the artificial intelligence application's suspected breach of privacy rules. The agency, also known as Garante, accused Microsoft-backed OpenAI of failing to check the age of ChatGPT's users who are supposed to be aged 13 or above. ChatGPT has an "absence of any legal basis that justifies the massive collection and storage of personal data" to "train" the chatbot, Garante said. OpenAI has 20 days to respond with remedies or could risk a fine of up to 20 million euros ($21.68 million) or 4% of its annual worldwide turnover. OpenAI said it has disabled ChatGPT for users in Italy at the request of the Garante.