Poland investigates OpenAI over privacy concerns

Poland investigates OpenAI over privacy concerns

WARSAW (Reuters) – A Polish watchdog is investigating Microsoft-backed OpenAI over a complaint that its ChatGPT chatbot breaks European Union data protection laws known as the GDPR, it said.

OpenAI has already faced at least its second class action lawsuit in San Francisco federal court for allegedly breaking privacy laws. It did not respond to requests for comment when the lawsuit was reported earlier this month.

“The case concerns the violation of many provisions on the protection of personal data, so we will ask Open AI to answer a number of questions,” said Jan Nowak, President of Poland’s Personal Data Protection Office (UODO).

According to UODO, the unnamed complainant said that OpenAI did not correct false information about them which had been generated by ChatGPT.

The complainant said they were unable to find out which of their personal data was processed by the company, and received evasive and misleading answers to questions.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

In addition to privacy cases, tech companies including Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and Stability AI have been hit with recent lawsuits over the “scraping” of copyrighted materials and personal data from across the internet to train their generative AI systems.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer application in history earlier this year, reaching 100 million active users in January only two months after it was launched. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in the company.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Jan Harvey)