Poland is investigating OpenAI over privacy concerns

WARSAW (Reuters) – A Polish regulator is investigating Microsoft-backed OpenAI over a complaint that its ChatGPT chatbot violates European Union data protection laws known as GDPR, it said.

OpenAI has already faced at least its second class action lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco alleging violations of data protection laws. When the lawsuit was reported earlier this month, the company did not respond to requests for comment.

“The case concerns the violation of numerous provisions on personal data protection, so we will ask Open AI to answer a number of questions,” said Jan Nowak, President of the Polish Office for Personal Data Protection (UODO).

According to UODO, the unnamed complainant said that OpenAI did not correct false information about him generated by ChatGPT.

The complainant stated that he was unable to find out which of his personal data was being processed by the company and that he received evasive and misleading answers to questions.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

In addition to privacy cases, technology companies such as Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and Stability AI have recently faced lawsuits over “scraping” copyrighted materials and personal data from the Internet to train their generative AI systems.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer application in history earlier this year, reaching 100 million active users in January just two months after its launch. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in the company.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Jan Harvey)

Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters.