Decisions like this just prove how massive the market for a self-hostable alternative is. They’re not banning it because it’s a bad tool, they’re banning it because they’re concerned about what happens to the source code their engineers paste into it.
There are already a bunch of OSS attempts, and it likely won’t take long until we have something of comparable quality to ChatGPT is available for companies to host on their own hardware.
My little conspiracy theory on this: I wouldn’t be surprised if every intelligence agency in Europe knew how did it, but no one is going to tell, and we’re not going to find out for years.
An attack on critical infrastructure like this is essentially an act of war, and nobody in Europe wants to escalate this conflict any more by admitting they know who’s responsible.
If it was Ukraine, it would result in public outcry, and we’d basically be forced to cease any military support. If it was Russia, it’s an act of war and there’d be public pressure in the other direction, maybe even enough to make us officially declare war. If it was the US, there’d be pressure for at the very least some pretty severe diplomatic consequences.
Nobody in European governments wants any of those results right now. Everybody is content to just leave it be and an article like this pointing blame at one of the three every couple of months is the only thing we’ll hear on it until it gets declassified in 50 years when it doesn’t matter anymore.
I mean…you can be pedantic about it, but to me this reads fairly clearly as “If it can’t be removed with a screwdriver, it’s not allowed.”