The misinformation provided by ChatGPT may be in violation of EU privacy rules, and OpenAI did not correct this information.
The Zhitong Finance App learned that on Monday, OpenAI received a privacy complaint from the Austrian rights organization NoyB, claiming that the erroneous information provided by its generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT may have violated EU privacy rules, yet OpenAI did not correct this information.
ChatGPT sparked a GenAI craze at the end of 2022. It can mimic human conversations and perform tasks such as creating long text summaries, writing poems, and even making suggestions for themed parties.
NOYB claims that the complainant in its case was a public figure who asked ChatGPT about his birthday, but the chatbot provided misinformation several times rather than responding that this data was not currently available.
According to the organization, OpenAI denied the complainant's request to correct or delete the data, saying it was impossible to correct the data, and did not disclose any information about the processed data, data source, or recipient.
NOYB said it has filed a complaint with the Austrian Data Protection Authority requesting an investigation into OpenAI's data processing situation and measures taken to ensure the accuracy of personal data processed by the company's big language model.
NoyB data protection attorney Maartjede Graaf said in a statement: “It is clear that the company is currently unable to allow chatbots like ChatGPT to comply with EU law when processing personal data.”
She said, “If a system doesn't produce accurate and transparent results, it can't be used to generate data about individuals. Technology must comply with legal requirements, not the other way around.”
In the past, OpenAI has acknowledged that the tool tends to answer questions with “answers that sound reasonable but are incorrect or meaningless,” and that the question remains challenging.