The data protection chief of Ireland has called on lawmakers not to rush in regards to regulating generative AI technologies such as OpenAi’s ChatGPT.

Speaking at a Bloomberg conference Helen Dixon, the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) for Ireland, said that while AI does require oversight, lawmakers across the world should be focused on “figuring out how to regulate it properly,” and avoid creating laws that “really aren’t going to stand up.”

Dixon’s comments were made during a heightened period of scrutiny for chatbots and specifically ChatGPT, which has been temporarily banned in Italy. The body that unites Europe’s national privacy watchdogs recently set up a task force on ChatGPT.

She added: "For the Irish data protection commission, where we are at is trying to understand a little bit more about the technology, about the large language models, about where the training data is sourced."

The Irish DPC has significant sway over decision making in technology, with many of the world’s largest tech firms such as Microsoft, Amazon and EA housing their EU headquarters in Ireland. OpenAI however is a unique case, having no offices across the 27-nation EU bloc.

Share Story: