Japanese Privacy Supervisors Warn OpenAI About Collecting Sensitive Data Without Permit

JAKARTA - Japan's privacy watchdog said on Friday June 2 that it had warned OpenAI, a startup backed by Microsoft and the ChatGPT developer, not to collect sensitive data without permission from people.

The Personal Information Protection Commission stated that OpenAI should minimize sensitive data collection for machine learning, it was stated in its statement. They also added that further action may be taken if there are further concerns.

Regulators around the world are trying to draw up rules governing the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which can create text and images, the impact compared to internet arrivals.

Although Japan has fallen behind in some of the latest technological trends, they seem more eager to follow advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to maintain productivity as their population shrinks.

The watchdog noted the need to maintain a balance between privacy concerns and the potential benefits of generative artificial intelligence, including accelerating innovation and dealing with problems such as climate change.

Japan is the third largest source of traffic to the OpenAI website, according to analytics company Similarweb.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in April with the aim of expanding his presence in Japan ahead of a meeting of the G7 leader in which Kishida led discussions on AI arrangements.

The European Union, which regulates global trends in technology regulation, has formed a task force on ChatGPT and is working on a series of rules that could be the first rule to regulate AI.

Meanwhile, the rapid spread of chatbots such as ChatGPT has forced regulators to rely on existing rules to bridge the gap.

Italy regulator Garante has requested that ChatGPT be temporarily suspended before the company agrees to install age verification features and allows users in Europe to block their information from being used to train the system.

Altman said last week that OpenAI had no plans to leave Europe after previously indicating that the startup might do so if EU regulations were too difficult to comply with.