OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot application ChatGPT breached data protection rules, said Italy's data protection authority on Monday, pressing ahead with an investigation started last year. The Italian data protection authority, known as Garante, is one of the European Union's most proactive in assessing AI platform compliance with the bloc's data privacy regime. Last year, it banned ChatGPT over alleged breaches of European Union (EU) privacy rules. The service was reactivated after OpenAI addressed issues concerning, amongst other things, the right of users to decline to consent to the use of personal data to train algorithms. At the time, the regulator said it would continue its investigations. In an e-mailed statement, OpenAI said it believed its practices were aligned with the EU's privacy laws. ""We actively work to reduce personal data in training our systems like ChatGPT,"" it said, adding that it ""plans to continue to work constructively with the Garante.""