OpenAI now lets enterprises choose where to host their data
OpenAI expanded its data residency regions for ChatGPT and its API, giving business users the ability to store and process their data as close to their business operations as possible and better comply with local regulations. This expansion removes one of the biggest compliance blockers preventing global enterprises from widely deploying ChatGPT.
Data residencyOften an overlooked piece of the enterprise AI puzzle, it processes and manages data according to the laws and customs of the countries where it is stored.
ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu subscribers can now choose to have their data processed in:
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Europe (European Economic Area and Switzerland)
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United Kingdom
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United States
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Canada
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Japan
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South Korea
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Singapore
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India
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Australia
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United Arab Emirates
OpenAI said inside a blog post that it “plans to expand availability to additional regions over time.”
Customers can store data such as conversations, uploaded files, custom GPTs, and image generation artifacts. This only applies to data at rest, not as it moves through a system or when used for inference. OpenAIs documentation notes that inference residency remains available only in the US for now
ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu users can set up new workspaces with data residency. Enterprise customers on the API who are approved for advanced data controls can enable data residency by creating a new project and selecting their preferred region.
OpenAI first started offering data residency in Europe February this year. The European Union has some of the strictest data regulations in the world, based on the GDPR.
The importance of data residency
Until now, companies had fewer choices for handling data flowing through ChatGPT. For example, some organizational data would be processed under US law rather than under European rules.
Companies are at risk of violating data compliance rules if their data is processed at rest elsewhere and does not adhere to strict policies.
“With more than 1 million enterprise customers around the world using OpenAI directly, we have expanded our data residency offering – allowing enterprise customers to store data in select regions, helping organizations comply with local regulations and data protection requirements,” the company said in its blog post.
However, companies should also understand that if they use a connector or integration within ChatGPT, these applications have different data residency rules. When OpenAI was launched business knowledge for ChatGPTit warned users that depending on the connector they use, the data location may be limited to the US
