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Garante orders ChatGPT off in Italy, then lifts the order four weeks later

Garante took interim measure action against OpenAI, L.L.C. over ChatGPT, announced 31 March 2023. No financial penalty was imposed. Status: confirmed.

The record

Key facts

Record ID
AIT-2023-0001
Status
Confirmed
Action type
Interim measure
Regime
GDPR
Authority
Garante per la protezione dei dati personali
Jurisdiction
Italy
Target
OpenAI, L.L.C., headquartered in United States
Sector
Generative AI
AI system
ChatGPT
Date announced
Date of decision
Amount
No financial penalty
Appeal
None recorded. The measure was complied with rather than challenged.
Last verified

In full

What happened, and why it matters

The Italian authority ordered an urgent, temporary limitation on OpenAI's processing of data about people in Italy, which took ChatGPT offline in the country from 31 March 2023. It was the first time a European regulator had reached into a general purpose generative system and stopped it. The order named four concerns: no information given to users or to the people whose data appeared in the training corpus, no identified legal basis for training, factual inaccuracy in model outputs measured against the accuracy principle in Article 5(1)(d), and no age verification on a service its own terms restricted to users over thirteen. OpenAI did not litigate. It published a training notice, opened an objection route, added an age gate at sign up and agreed to an information campaign, and the Garante lifted the limitation on 28 April 2023. The service was back after twenty nine days. This record is the origin point of European generative AI enforcement and it set the pattern that has held ever since: authorities move first with interim measures rather than fines, compliance is negotiated quickly, and the underlying legal questions about training data are left for a later decision. That later decision came in November 2024, and a court annulled it in March 2026.

At a glance

The four things to take away

  • Urgent temporary limitation adopted 30 March 2023, in effect 31 March 2023.
  • First order by a European authority to stop a general purpose generative AI service.
  • Lifted on 28 April 2023 after four remedial measures were put in place.
  • No fine attached to this order. The fine came in a separate 2024 decision.

Orders

What the authority required

  • publish a notice explaining how personal data is used to train the models
  • provide a way for people to object to that training use
  • put an age gate in place at sign up
  • run an information campaign about the processing

The law

Provisions this action rests on

Read the official text of Article 50 in the EU AI Act Explorer, consolidated with the Digital Omnibus applied.

How it moved

Timeline

  1. Garante adopts the urgent limitation order

  2. ChatGPT becomes unavailable in Italy

  3. Garante sets out the conditions for the service to return

  4. Limitation lifted, service restored in Italy

Verification

Sources

Primary sources are the authority's own decision or press release, the Official Journal, or a court judgment. A record with no source is not published.

  1. Garante, provvedimento del 30 marzo 2023 (doc. web 9870832)Primary · 30 March 2023
  2. Garante press release, ChatGPT: Garante privacy, riapre la piattaforma in ItaliaPrimary · 28 April 2023

Next

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Cite this record

Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with attribution. The record ID AIT-2023-0001 is permanent and is never reused.

In a sentence
According to the GAGE EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker (as of 20 August 2026), garante orders chatgpt off in italy, then lifts the order four weeks later.
APA
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). (2026). Garante orders ChatGPT off in Italy, then lifts the order four weeks later. EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker. Retrieved 20 August 2026, from https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2023-0001-garante-openai-chatgpt-temporary-limitation
MLA
"Garante orders ChatGPT off in Italy, then lifts the order four weeks later." EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker, GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education), 20 August 2026, https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2023-0001-garante-openai-chatgpt-temporary-limitation.
Chicago
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). "Garante orders ChatGPT off in Italy, then lifts the order four weeks later." EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker. Last modified 20 August 2026. https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2023-0001-garante-openai-chatgpt-temporary-limitation.
Permalink
https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2023-0001-garante-openai-chatgpt-temporary-limitation

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