Italy’s data protection authority said on Tuesday it was prepared to unblock access to ChatGPT in the country later this month if OpenAI took “beneficial measures” to address its concerns, Reuters reported.

ChatGPT’s website became unavailable in Italy at the end of March after the data protection authority temporarily restricted access and opened an investigation into alleged privacy violations.

“We are ready to reopen ChatGPT on April 30, if OpenAI is willing to take useful measures. I think it exists in the company, we will see,” said the head of Italian management Pasquale Stanzione in an interview with Corriera Della Sera journalists.

His comments came after the agency he heads published last week a series of requirements that OpenAI must meet by April 30.

On March 31, Italy became the first country in Western Europe to block access to ChatGPT, but the explosive popularity of the OpenAI-developed chatbot has caught the attention of lawmakers and regulators in several states.

Lawmakers in the European Parliament called on world leaders on Monday to hold a summit to control the development of advanced artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT, saying progress in the field had been faster than experts had expected.

Stanzione said on Tuesday that Italy had decided to unilaterally take action against ChatGPT because urgent action was needed.

“Waiting for a European decision would mean a delay of at least three to four months,” he said.

Charges were brought to the Italian authorities by ChatGPT

The main accusations of the Stanzione-led agency ChatGPT and OpenAI are that it does not comply with the law on personal data and does not have a system to verify the age of minor users.

The Italian authority noted that on March 20, ChatGPT “suffered a data breach (data leak) regarding user conversations and information related to payments made by subscribers to its paid service.”

The Italian authorities also criticize the ChatGPT software for “the lack of an information note for users whose data is collected by OpenAI, but above all, the lack of a legal basis to justify the bulk collection and storage of personal data in order to “train the algorithms that make the platform work”.

In addition, in the context in which this conversational robot is addressed to people over 13 years old, “the authority underlines the fact that the absence of any filter to verify the user’s age exposes minors to answers that are completely inappropriate for their level of development.”

The Italian authority’s announcement on March 31 came days after Europol warned that criminals were ready to use artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT to commit fraud and other cybercrimes.

From phishing to disinformation and malware, the rapidly evolving capabilities of chatbots can be quickly exploited by attackers, Europol assesses in a report.