The Battle Over ChatGPT Has Begun

And it is going to get messy.

It is likely to start, at least for now, in Europe, since they have much stronger privacy laws than we do. But as more U.S. states enact second generation privacy laws, the U.S. may join the battle.

Fundamentally, the issue is ownership of your data that is essential to ChatGPT being able to do what it does. OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT is just taking the heat right now because they are the most prominent player.

Italy has already issued a temporary ban on it; Germany is considering one, as is Spain and the EU’s Data Protection Board has created a task force to study the issue. To a lay person, it seems like the claims have merit, but no easy fix.

The newest case is this.

Alexander Hanff is a privacy advocate. He is the guy behind GDPR.

ChatGPT is reporting that he is dead. He is, at the moment, quite alive and unhappy.

This situation has a name; it is called AI Hallucinations.

In a cease and desist letter to OpenAI, he is demanding that they delete the entire GPT 3.5 and GPT 4 models and all training data that contains his personal data.

He also sent OpenAI a Data Subject Access Request or DSAR. DSARs are a core part of GDPR and most U.S. state second-generation privacy laws. In the DSAR he asked OpenAI for a copy of all data they have on him. If you think about the OpenAI model, that is pretty likely impossible. U.S. DSAR rights vary from state to state, so they might not have the same teeth that EU DSARs do.

Also, based on GDPR, he says he never gave consent for them to process his data and doesn’t now.

Assuming this concept grows legs, you can assume that Americans in the 6 states that now have second-generation privacy laws will do the same – ask for a copy of their data and ask them to stop processing it and delete it.

This also applies, conceptually, to Google’s BARD and Musk’s Truth large language model. And all others.

“Given that you had no legal basis to process my personal data for the training of your GPT large-language model, and that the data your model is producing is inaccurate, defamatory and harmful – I hereby demand that OpenAI delete the entire GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 models and all training data that contains my personal data,” said the letter, posted by Hanff on Linkedin.
https://cybernews.com/news/openai-ordered-delete-chatgpt/

The concept of AI Hallucinations is based on the AI returning information that looks real, but, in fact, is completely false. We have already seen this where people ask the AI to write something and provide citations. Apparently, the AI does, in fact, create citations. Unfortunately, they are totally made up and do not exist.

He also says that just because some data exists online does not give them the right to use it commercially.

“That the data is available online is not a license to use it for commercial activities and does not provide an exemption to the requirements of Article 5 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which requires that all processing of my personal data must be fair, accurate, lawful and meet obligations of transparency and data minimization,” Hanff’s letter said.

He is giving them 30 days to cease using his data.

Finally, he said, “this is not a drill”.

Fundamentally, large language models exist because they can vacuum up all of the data that they can see. They do not know if the data is correct and, to be honest, don’t care.

These AIs have huge value, but they are going to need to figure this out. The tech companies that are well known for “move fast and break things” have done both – moved fast and broken things. Given the visibility of these new tools, this will need to be figured out.

I doubt they will figure out a way to deal with this and so, Alexander Hanff’s name will join Max Schrem’s as official thorns in the sides of companies that can only stay in business if they can use your data indescriminately. And his name will likely be on a lawsuit. Max Schrems has now graduated from law school and is a practicing attorney in Vienna. He might well be willing to help him out.

This will be interesting. Get your popcorn out.

Credit: Cyber News