Italian Privacy Authority Warns Gedi Over Personal Data in OpenAI Agreement
Italy's privacy regulator warned newspaper publisher Gedi that its September agreement with OpenAI to provide access to archived news content containing personal data may violate EU privacy law. The Authority found Gedi had not properly assessed the legal basis for sharing such data or ensured transparency with affected individuals.
What happened
The Italian Privacy Authority (Garante della Privacy) issued a formal warning to Gedi, publisher of La Repubblica newspaper, regarding an agreement signed with OpenAI on 24 September to provide access to the company's digital archives containing personal data. The Authority stated that newspaper archives contain 'the stories of millions of people, with information, details, and personal data, even extremely sensitive, that cannot be licensed to third parties for training artificial intelligence without proper safeguards'.
The Authority found that if Gedi communicated personal data from its archives to OpenAI under the agreement, it could violate EU regulations. The Authority noted that the data involved includes large volumes of personal data of a particular and judicial nature, and that Gedi's impact assessment did not sufficiently analyse the legal basis for transferring such data to OpenAI for algorithm training.
Reported impact
Gedi stated the agreement does not involve 'the sale of personal data' but concerns 'editorial content derived from journalistic activity' and aims at developing new ways to make editorial content accessible through AI tools while protecting intellectual property rights. Gedi clarified that no editorial content has been communicated to OpenAI and will not be until ongoing analyses and checks are completed.
Index analysis
The Authority identified insufficient fulfillment of information and transparency obligations toward individuals whose data may be affected, and stated Gedi cannot guarantee the rights of those individuals under European privacy rules, particularly the right to object to data processing.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.