A developer of ChatGPT said Monday that his company plans to open an office in Japan amid growing concerns about the chatbot's unauthorized collection of personal data and impact on learning environments.
Sam Altman, chief executive of U.S.-based OpenAI, met Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, as the risks of artificial intelligence are expected to be discussed at the Group of Seven ministerial gathering on digital issues, which Japan will host in late April.
Altman told reporters that he explained to Kishida, who will preside over the G-7 summit in his constituency of Hiroshima in May, about the pros and cons of ChatGPT while saying the premier showed an interest in the AI technology.
Chatbots are software applications trained using massive amounts of data from the internet, enabling them to process and simulate human-like conversations with users.
ChatGPT, launched in November 2022 as a prototype, stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer and is driven by a machine learning model that works much like the human brain.
The talks between Kishida and Altman came as many countries have been stepping up regulations on the use of ChatGPT over suspicions that OpenAI illegally gathers vast amounts of personal data from its users, hurting privacy.
Altman has expressed eagerness to exchange views with policymakers across the globe on the AI technology and his firm's ChatGPT.
In Japan, the education ministry has been trying to formulate guidelines regarding the use of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots in schools as fears have been mounting over their effects on students' writing and thinking skills.
After he met with Kishida, Altman said, "We talked about the upsides of this technology and how to mitigate the downsides," voicing hope that AI chatbots will prevail in Japan further as models of them become more suitable for the nation's language and culture.
On Monday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said Japan will explore using the chatbot technology to alleviate administrative burdens on government officials.
But the top government spokesman added that the move could only be realized if anxiety about handling confidential information and personal data leaks were resolved.
