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Italy’s data protection authority, the Garante, announced a €15 million fine against OpenAI on 20 December 2024. It said OpenAI failed to report a March 2023 data breach, used people’s personal data to train ChatGPT without first establishing an adequate legal basis, and did not meet transparency and information duties. The Garante also ordered a six-month public information campaign. The case has since had a major court development: a Rome Court judgment published on 18 March 2026 accepted OpenAI’s opposition, and the Garante says its 2024 decision was temporarily removed from its website.
Why did Italy fine OpenAI?
The fine followed an investigation by the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, Italy’s national data protection authority. The authority announced its decision on 20 December 2024, saying OpenAI had not notified it of a March 2023 data breach, had processed users’ personal data to train ChatGPT without first identifying an appropriate legal basis, and had violated transparency and related information obligations. The Garante’s announcement describes those findings.
The sanction came with a non-monetary remedy: a six-month institutional information campaign to explain how ChatGPT collects and uses personal data and what rights users have. The Garante—not the European Commission—issued the sanction under its role as Italy’s privacy regulator.
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What privacy concerns were at issue?
Failure to notify a data breach
The Garante said OpenAI did not notify the authority of a breach that occurred in March 2023. Its public summary identifies the failure to notify as one of the grounds for the decision; it does not, by itself, set out all technical details of the incident.
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Personal data used to train ChatGPT
The authority said OpenAI processed users’ personal data for ChatGPT training without first identifying an appropriate legal basis. This finding concerned the legal basis for the processing, rather than a general claim that every use of ChatGPT data is unlawful.
Transparency and information duties
The Garante also found that OpenAI had violated the principle of transparency and related duties to inform users. Its English-language summary states that OpenAI “did not notify the Authority of the data breach it underwent in March 2023, has processed users’ personal data to train ChatGPT without first identifying an appropriate legal basis and has violated the principle of transparency and the related information obligations toward users.”
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How did the case begin in 2023?
The 2024 decision grew out of an earlier intervention. In March 2023, the Garante temporarily restricted ChatGPT’s processing of personal data in Italy. At that point, the authority raised concerns about information for users and other data subjects, the legal basis for large-scale collection of data used for training, the risk of inaccurate personal information, and the lack of effective age verification. The Garante’s March 2023 notice describes that temporary measure.
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OpenAI said it worked with the authority to restore ChatGPT in Italy after the restriction. That earlier temporary action should not be confused with the later €15 million fine: they were separate stages in the same regulatory matter.
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Was the €15 million fine overturned?
The legal status changed in 2026. The Garante’s current notice says that Decision No. 755 of 2 November 2024 was temporarily removed from its website after Rome Court judgment No. 4153/2026, published on 18 March 2026, accepted OpenAI’s opposition. The Garante’s notice reports this development.
That is a significant court outcome, but the notice does not provide the judgment’s full reasoning or a complete account of the consequences for enforcement. Without the judgment itself and any subsequent procedural developments, it would be premature to say that every aspect of the fine has been finally extinguished. The Garante’s temporary removal of the decision from its website is the status it reports; it is not, on its own, a full explanation of the ruling’s legal effect.
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What did OpenAI say?
OpenAI called the 2024 decision disproportionate and said it would appeal. In a statement reported by the Associated Press, a company spokesperson said: “They’ve since recognized our industry-leading approach to protecting privacy in AI, yet this fine is nearly 20 times the revenue we made in Italy during the relevant period.” That was OpenAI’s characterization of the fine and its position on the case, not a finding by the Garante.
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