OpenAI CEO Altman backs down on threat of company leaving Europe

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reversed course on a warning that the company may have to stop operating in Europe based on a proposed EU regulation.

Last week Altman warned that OpenAI might have to pull its operations out of Europe if the current version of the EU AI Act moved forward because it was over-regulating AI products. Altman said at an event in London that we can comply and if we can t we ll discontinue operating. There are technical limitations to what s possible. We are excited to continue to operate here and of course have no plans to leave, Altman said. He also added that he had a very productive week of discussions in Europe about how to best regulate AI! Altman's concerns about overregulation stem from provisions in the draft of the EU ParliamentEU Parliament's AI Act that would require companies with generative AI products, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, to disclose the use of copyrighted material in its training models that help the AI learn to generate text and images in response to user prompts.

These amendments relate mainly to transparency, which ensures the AI and the company building it are trustworthy, said Dragos Tudorache, a Romanian member of the European Parliament, who is leading the effort to draft the legislation. I don t see a reason why any company shys away from transparency. The EU's regulatory proposal requires users to know that AI, instead of human beings, created the content. It would also require certain to be designated high risk if they are intended to be used in the biometric identification of humans, employment recruitment andévaluation, educational and vocational training, managing critical infrastructure, law enforcement, immigration and more.

The EU ParliamentEU Parliament is considering changes to the law, and the next step in the process is a vote by the parliament between June 12 - 15 on a negotiating draft. The EU ParliamentEU Parliament can then negotiate a final version of the law with the Council of European Ministers.

OpenAI's announcement of changes to its system came after some ChatGPT users exposed messages and payment information in violation of European data protection rules, the company said in a statement.

OpenAI's changes included Disclosures about how it collects and uses data to train algorithms powering ChatGPT, giving EU users a new form to object to the use of their data in training, and adding a tool to verify users ages when signing up.

Bradford Betz and Reuters contributed to this story.