Poland's Personal Data Protection Office (UODO) has opened an investigation into OpenAI over privacy concerns related to ChatGPT. The probe launched by the Polish data protection watchdog comes after an unnamed plaintiff filed a complaint, alleging that OpenAI did not rectify the wrong information generated by ChatGPT about him. The complaint also accuses OpenAI of multiple violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) under the EU privacy rules.

Why does it matter?

As the UODO investigation is ongoing, it is not yet apparent what measures, if any, will be taken against OpenAI. However, the company is already facing a class-action privacy lawsuit in San Francisco's federal court. This Polish case could have implications beyond Poland and possibly set a precedent for how other jurisdictions regulate AI and data privacy. In addition, OpenAI, along with Microsoft, Meta, and Stability AI, has been recently sued in the US by a string of high-profile authors and copyright owners. The lawsuits claim that the companies are scraping copyrighted material and personal data online without permission in order to train their GenAI models.

These mounting legal challenges in different countries underscore the current risks associated with designing, developing, and operating GenAI technologies that are global in nature, and the pressing need for a comprehensive AI regulatory framework.