The Japanese Personal Information Protection Commission on Friday (2/6) said it had given a warning to OpenAI which developed ChatGPT, an AI-based chatbot service not to collect sensitive user data without permission.
In a statement from the protection commission, OpenAI is required to minimize the sensitive data it collects for machine learning and will take strong action if OpenAI creates more problems in the future.
Launching from Reuters, according to Japanese analytics firm Similarweb itself is the third largest source of traffic to the OpenAI website. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in April met Prime Minister Fumio Kishida with an eye on expansion in Japan, ahead of the Group of Seven (G7) leaders' summit where Kishida led discussions on AI settings.
The European Union, a global trendsetter in technology regulation set up a task force on ChatGPT and is now working on what could be the first set of rules to regulate AI. Meanwhile, the rapid spread of chatbots meant that regulators had to rely on existing regulations to bridge the gap.
Italian regulator Garante took ChatGPT offline before the company agreed to install an age verification feature and let European users block their information from being used to train the system.
Altman last week said OpenAI had no plans to leave Europe after previously suggesting the startup might do so if EU regulations were too difficult to comply with.