Skip to main content
AnnulledAI adjacent

Garante fines OpenAI 15 million euro, and the Court of Rome annuls the decision in full

Garante took fine action against OpenAI, L.L.C. over ChatGPT, announced 20 December 2024. The amount is 15 million euro. Status: annulled by a court, and excluded from every total on this tracker.

The record

Key facts

Record ID
AIT-2024-0007
Status
Annulled
Action type
Fine
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
15 million euro
Appeal
annulled. Court of Rome, judgment of 18 March 2026. The court held that the establishment of OpenAI Ireland in February 2024 engaged the one stop shop mechanism and displaced the Italian authority's competence.
Last verified

In full

What happened, and why it matters

This is the record that explains why an enforcement tracker must carry appeal status as a first class field. In November 2024 the Italian authority fined OpenAI 15 million euro for training ChatGPT without an identified legal basis, failing to notify a March 2023 data breach, giving inadequate information to users, and having no age verification. It attached an unusual remedy: a six month public information campaign across Italian media. The fine was announced on 20 December 2024. On 21 March 2025 the Court of Rome suspended it. On 18 March 2026 the same court annulled the decision in full, holding that once OpenAI Ireland was established in February 2024 the Irish authority became lead supervisory authority under the one stop shop in Article 56, and the Italian authority no longer had competence to decide the case on its own. The reasoning turned on competence, not on whether the processing was lawful. Nothing in the judgment says training ChatGPT on European personal data was permissible. It says the wrong regulator decided. Any tracker or news report that still counts 15 million euro as a standing European AI fine is reporting a number that no longer exists.

At a glance

The four things to take away

  • Fine of 15 million euro plus a media campaign order, decision 2 November 2024, announced 20 December 2024.
  • Suspended by the Court of Rome on 21 March 2025.
  • Annulled in full by the Court of Rome on 18 March 2026 on one stop shop competence grounds.
  • The annulment decided competence, not the lawfulness of the underlying processing.
  • This amount is excluded from confirmed fine totals on this tracker.

Orders

What the authority required

  • run a six month information campaign across Italian radio, television, newspapers and the internet explaining how the models are trained and how people can object

The law

Provisions this action rests on

  • GDPR Article 5(1)(a)violated
  • GDPR Article 6violated
  • GDPR Article 8violated
  • GDPR Article 13violated
  • GDPR Article 33violated
  • GDPR Article 56cited

How it moved

Timeline

  1. Garante adopts the fining decision

  2. Decision announced

  3. OpenAI states it will appeal

  4. Court of Rome suspends the decision

  5. Court of Rome annuls the decision in full for want of competence

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 press release, Intelligenza artificiale: il Garante privacy sanziona OpenAIPrimary · 20 December 2024
  2. Wilson Sonsini, OpenAI Prevails in Landmark Italian AI and GDPR Enforcement CaseSecondary · 25 March 2026
  3. European Law Blog, Establish, Then Escape? How the Court of Rome, the One-Stop-Shop and a Single Word Opened an AI Enforcement GapSecondary · 1 April 2026

Next

Related enforcement actions

Cite this record

Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with attribution. The record ID AIT-2024-0007 is permanent and is never reused.

In a sentence
According to the GAGE EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker (as of 20 August 2026), garante fines openai 15 million euro, and the court of rome annuls the decision in full.
APA
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). (2026). Garante fines OpenAI 15 million euro, and the Court of Rome annuls the decision in full. EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker. Retrieved 20 August 2026, from https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2024-0007-garante-openai-fine-annulled-court-of-rome
MLA
"Garante fines OpenAI 15 million euro, and the Court of Rome annuls the decision in full." 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-2024-0007-garante-openai-fine-annulled-court-of-rome.
Chicago
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). "Garante fines OpenAI 15 million euro, and the Court of Rome annuls the decision in full." EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker. Last modified 20 August 2026. https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2024-0007-garante-openai-fine-annulled-court-of-rome.
Permalink
https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2024-0007-garante-openai-fine-annulled-court-of-rome

Back to the full enforcement tracker, or see every action against generative ai and every action in Italy.

Last updated . Every record re verified . The tracker is checked every Monday, and the same day for any action under the AI Act.

Powered by GAGE, free EU AI Act tools from the Global Academy of Generative-AI Education