Italian authorities have accused OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, of breaching EU data protection law, giving the US firm 30 days to respond.

Italy's data protection watchdog has "notified breaches of data protection law to OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT's artificial intelligence platform", it said in a statement Monday.

The watchdog blocked the popular chatbot last year for a few weeks, becoming the first Western country to take such action.

After that temporary ban, the watchdog concluded that the "available evidence pointed to the existence of breaches of the provisions contained in the EU GDPR", the European Union's general data protection regulation, it said.

"OpenAI may submit its counterclaims concerning the alleged breaches within 30 days."

The watchdog said that in making a final determination in the case, it would "take account of the work in progress" by a task force set up by the EU's central data regulator to help countries deal with issues surrounding ChatGPT.

Last year, the Italian watchdog said OpenAI had no legal basis to justify the mass collection and storage of personal data for training the algorithms underlying the operation of ChatGPT.

It also highlighted a lack of clarity over whose data was being collected.