MILAN, March 8 (Reuters) - Italy's data protection

agency said on Friday it had opened an investigation into a

service developed by Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed Open AI that can generate

videos based on text prompts.

The regulator, known as Garante, asked Open AI to clarify

whether the way it informs users and non users about the data it

employs for its product, known as Sora, is in line with European

Union regulations.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Italian regulator is one of the bloc's most proactive

authorities in assessing AI platform compliance with the EU's

data privacy regime. Last year it banned ChatGPT over alleged

breaches of the bloc's privacy rules.

In its statement it did not level any specific accusation

against OpenAI but said it was looking at the potential

implications that Sora might have on the use of personal data in

the EU and in Italy in particular.

Among other requests, it asked OpenAI to provide information

on how the algorithm was trained, which data were collected and

used to train it, and whether the service is already available

to users in the EU and Italy.