The latest draft of India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill, 2023, which was recently approved by the cabinet, could potentially prevent generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms like ChatGPT or Google’s Bard from processing personal data of Indians available in the public domain.
While the final bill is not yet public, experts analysing a leaked version of the draft suggest that a clause permitting search engines to process publicly available personal data has been removed.
If AI platforms like ChatGPT scrape the internet to access such data without obtaining explicit consent from data principals, they may face the risk of lawsuits, similar to the ones OpenAI is currently facing in the US. The removal of the specific clause from the bill implies that AI chatbots will only be allowed to collect and process publicly available personal information with prior consent from data principals.
The complexity of recent developments in artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, which heavily rely on publicly accessible personal data for training their algorithms, has experts concerned that this consent-based method may fall short. The investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) into OpenAI’s use of publicly available data has brought to light the potential legal repercussions that AI platforms operating in India may encounter if they process data without specific authorisation.
Search engines, online directories, credit rating companies, and other platforms that rely on publicly available personal data may be impacted by the deletion of the language from the DPDP Bill, 2023. Given the enormous amount of data that search engines and other AI-based systems handle, critics claim that this strategy may cause user consent fatigue.
Despite the removal of the clause from the DPDP Bill, the Indian government has publicly stated that it is not yet considering regulating generative AI models. Nevertheless, legal experts and technology professionals are closely watching the bill’s developments, as it could have significant implications for AI platforms and data protection in India.