On February 2nd, 2023, the Italian Data Protection Agency (Garante Per La Protezione Dei Dati Personali) urgently ordered a temporary limitation “on the processing of personal data relating to users in the Italian territory as performed by Luka Inc., the US-based developer and operator of Replika, in its capacity as controller of the processing of personal data that is carried out via the said app”.

The Italian ‘Garante per la protezione dei dati personali’ (Italian data protection authority) published a press release on November 14th, 2022, in which it announced that it had opened two separate investigations into the use of ‘smart video systems’ by two Italian municipalities.

The ‘Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés’ (CNIL – the French DPA) released its final decision on October 20th, 2022, sanctioning Clearview AI for its unlawful activity, which consists of collecting images of millions of individuals from the open web without any legal basis under the GDPR for doing so.