The practice of collecting vast amounts of personal data online to train artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms has been the subject of a fact-finding investigation by Italy’s data protection authority, the regulator announced on Wednesday.
When it comes to evaluating whether AI platforms comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Europe’s data privacy law, the watchdog is among the most proactive of the 31 national data protection authorities.
Due to a possible violation of privacy regulations, it temporarily prohibited the well-known chatbot ChatGPT from functioning in Italy earlier this year.
The Italian government announced on Wednesday that the review’s objective was to determine whether websites were putting in place “adequate measures” to stop AI platforms from data scraping, or the practice of gathering vast amounts of personal data for algorithms.
“Following the fact-finding investigation, the Authority reserves the right to take the necessary steps, also in an urgent matter” , the agency stated.
The statement made no mention of any companies.
Italy extended an invitation to consumer advocacy organizations, academics, and AI specialists to participate in the fact-finding phase and provide feedback over a 60-day period.
Numerous nations have been considering how to control AI. European legislators have taken the lead in developing regulations intended to establish a worldwide standard for a technology that is now essential to practically every sector of the economy. By next month, the draft rules might be approved.
According to a joint paper seen by Reuters, France, Germany, and Italy have agreed on how AI should be regulated. This is expected to expedite negotiations at the European level.
 algorithms has been the subject of a fact-finding investigation by Italy's data protection authority){kind=link}