OpenAI, one of the leading AI developers, is facing a privacy complaint in Austria. The European digital rights group NOYB filed the complaint on Monday, alleging that OpenAI has failed to address issues of misinformation and false information generated by its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, potentially violating EU privacy regulations.

NOYB highlighted a case involving an unidentified public figure who received inaccurate information from ChatGPT. Despite requests to correct or delete the data, OpenAI allegedly refused and did not disclose details about its training data and sources, prompting the complaint.

Maartje de Graaf, a lawyer for NOYB, stated that if a system cannot provide accurate and transparent results, it should not generate data about individuals, emphasizing the need for technology to comply with legal requirements.

NOYB has asked the Austrian data protection authority to investigate OpenAI’s data processing and accuracy measures. This complaint aligns with NOYB’s mission to ensure compliance with EU data protection laws and follows a trend of increasing scrutiny of chatbots over privacy issues.

Previously, in December 2023, a study by two European NGOs found similar issues with Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot, now Copilot, which provided misleading information about political elections in Germany and Switzerland. Google’s Gemini AI chatbot also faced criticism for inaccuracies in its image generator, for which Google apologized and promised updates. The response of other chatbots to these concerns and potential legal violations remains to be seen.