Italy’s Garante Imposes $5.64 Million On Luka For Violating Norms
Cites risks, as it has no age-verification system to restrict children from accessing the service
Italy’s data protection agency, Garante, has fined Luka Inc, the developer of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot company, Replika, for breaching rules to protect users’ data.
Established in 2017, San Francisco-based startup Replika offers users customised avatars to converse with them. The ‘virtual friend’ is marketed as a confidante to improve the users’ emotional well-being.
However, in 2023, the Italian privacy watchdog ordered Replika to suspend its service in the country, citing risks to children.
On probing, it noted that Replika lacked the legality to process users’ data. It had no age-verification system to restrict children from accessing the service, hence imposed five million euros ($5.64 million) on Luka.
The Italian watchdog has announced another investigation to assess whether Replika’s generative AI system was compliant with European Union (EU) privacy rules, especially in training its language model.
Garante is one of the European Union’s most proactive regulators in assessing AI-platform compliance with the bloc’s data privacy rules.
In 2024, it fined ChatGPT maker OpenAI 15 million euros after briefly banning its use in Italy in 2023 over the alleged breach of EU privacy regulations.