Personal data to be protected from AI tools?

Generative AI tools may face problems if they take personal data from the public domain in India. Know more details here.

India’s new DPDP 2023 policies may come as a concern to generative AI tool companies. (Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

Generative AI tools are becoming popular all over the world, but with popularity they are also causing serious privacy concerns to people and policy-makers too. Now, it is being reported that generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard may face problems in India as they will not be able to process the personal data of Indian citizens available in the public domain.

According to Economic Times. this is being surmised by experts from a leaked version of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill, 2023. Although it was approved by the Cabinet this month, the final bill/draft has not been made public yet.

If this statement comes out to be true, then generative AI companies may have to face lawsuits for scraping the personal information of Indians from the public domain. A similar case is going on in the US against OpenAI's platform ChatGPT for violating consumer protection laws by scraping data from the public domain.

Economic Times quotes a technology expert at a public policy think tank as saying, “Removing Clause 8(8), which listed any ‘processing of publicly available personal data' under public interest as a criterion for deemed consent, might impact new AI evolutions like ChatGPT."

What is Personal data available in the public domain?

Public domains like public registers, public search engines or public directories, etc contain personal data of individuals which can be easily accessed or obtained through various channels. These public domains are not protected by any laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws and they are easily accessible.

Due to these reasons, various countries like US and Italy have imposed strict restrictions on the matter and now India is also moving forward to protect the privacy rights of its citizens. This new clause will make generative AI tools take permission to use personal data.