OpenAI's ChatGPT faces privacy complaint: ‘Not following legal requirement…'

ChatGPT usually gives a disclaimer that the data might not be “adequate,” “updated,” or “incorrect” at times.

Advocacy organization NOYB filed a privacy complaint with the Austrian data protection authority against Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI, citing the company's failure to amend inaccurate data supplied by its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, which may have violated EU privacy regulations.

OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration taken. (Reuters)

According to reports, in a complaint by NOYB, it stated that the complainant, who is a well-known person, asked ChatGPT about his birthday but it repeatedly showed incorrect information.

ChatGPT usually gives a disclaimer that the data might not be “adequate,” “updated,” or “incorrect” at times when it is not sure of the information it is providing. However, in this case, it did not show that it did not have the necessary data required.

Moreover, it also refused to rectify the data when asked to. It also did not reveal any sources or references from which the data was derived when asked by the user.

There have been such cases in the past, wherein the OpenAI has not been able to give the correct information and the company has accepted the same a number of times. It is an issue that the company is trying to work on and fix at the earliest.

NOYB said that it filed a complaint to investigate the accuracy of personal data handled by OpenAI's huge language models. The complaint requested an investigation into OpenAI's data processing practices.

Maartje de Graaf, NOYB data protection lawyer, said in a statement, "It's clear that companies are currently unable to make chatbots like ChatGPT comply with EU law, when processing data about individuals. If a system cannot produce accurate and transparent results, it cannot be used to generate data about individuals. The technology has to follow the legal requirements, not the other way around.”