Italy’s ban on conversational artificial intelligence (AI), ChatGPT, sparked significant controversy among the tech industry and the country. The Italian deputy prime minister also criticized the ban as excessive.
On Friday, March 31, following concerns raised by the national data agency about possible privacy violations and failure to verify the age of users, Microsoft-backed OpenAI took ChatGPT offline in Italy. This action by the independent agency marked the first instance of a Western country taking measures against the AI chatbot.