Hot topic: Legal, Regulatory & Compliance Considerations about ChatGPT

Not a day goes by without a headline about new capabilities, use cases and products in the generative AI space. Today, we are looking at ChatGPT.

In brief

• This article elaborates legal, regulatory and compliance considerations concerning ChatGPT.
• While also discussing recent regulatory developments in the context of AI and data protection in particular.

ChatGPT is the current hot topic being discussed across the globe. Garnering over 100 million active users in the first two months since its launch on 30 November 2022, it is disrupting industries worldwide. The hype around ChatGPT is understandable given its impressive capabilities, however its widespread use has sparked debates concerning various legal, regulatory and compliance considerations. 

ChatGPT is a powerful artificial intelligence technology developed by the American AI company, OpenAI. It was built on a large language model (LLM) which uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses to natural language input. ChatGPT has been trained using vast amounts of text data which is then used to predict outputs in a text-based format.  

The release of ChatGPT has highlighted the potential benefits of adopting generative AI in a variety of fields, including the legal sector. ChatGPT can for example be useful within the legal industry for summarizing case studies, and automating mundane administrative tasks.

Despite the impressive opportunities and capabilities of ChatGPT, there are also various risks. A significant challenge of ChatGPT is its potential to produce bias or discriminatory outputs. The use of ChatGPT also raises ethical concerns regarding its potential to manipulate or deceive others. ChatGPT is prone to hallucinations and can generate false or misleading information that could harm consumers. In a legal context, questions may arise regarding the degree to which a person relies on information provided by ChatGPT or other generative AI. Additionally, while ChatGPT has certain safeguards that prevent it from outputting offensive and harmful content, these safeguards can be bypassed and exploited for purposes such as writing malicious code.

Of particular concern is the risk that ChatGPT poses to data privacy. The data collection method used to train ChatGPT may be unlawful if data was scraped from a source without the consent of the data owners. The data collected may include personal or sensitive data for which consent is required under relevant data protection laws, notably the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP). Transparency is another important aspect of data privacy in the context of ChatGPT. Users should be informed of how their personal data is being collected, processed and used, and should have the ability to access or control their personal data as required.