It turns out Ukrainians can’t use ChatGPT due to getting on OpenAI sanction list. Ministry of Digital Transformation has already addressed the company
ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) has become perhaps the most interesting AI project of recent times. On request, it can generate texts, code, maintain a conversation, etc. The chatbot was launched in November last year, is free to the general public, and has managed to gain more than a million users during that time.
But Ukrainians who tried to try its capabilities faced a problem — OpenAI services are not available for Ukraine.
As reported by Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation Oleksandr Bornyakov, it turns out that Ukraine is on the company’s sanctions list, which also includes the Russian Federation and Belarus:
We got on the company’s sanctions list, being next to russia, belarus and iran. The reasons for this decision are currently unknown. But there is a fact: our citizens cannot get access to advanced technologies.
Mr. Bornyakov also added that the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine has already applied to the company with a corresponding request to exclude the country from this list:
The IT industry always supports the values of freedom and democracy. Ukraine fights for them every day at the cost of the lives of the best of the best people who sought to change this world for the better. OpenAI, as you can see, we have a common goal. We await your decision and hope that you will listen to the voice of the country that currently defends our common values. And only the united civilized world is capable of defeating the enemy in this struggle.
There is currently no response from OpenAI. At the time of writing, OpenAI services are still not available for Ukraine.