OpenAI now lets enterprises choose where to host their data

OpenAI expanded its data residency regions for ChatGPT and its API, giving enterprise users the option to store and process their data closest to their business operations and better comply with local regulations. This expansion removes one of the biggest compliance blockers preventing global enterprises from deploying ChatGPT at scale.

Data residency, often an overlooked piece of the enterprise AI puzzle, processes and governs 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: 

• Europe (European Economic Area and Switzerland)

• United Kingdom

• United States

• Canada

• Japan

• South Korea

• Singapore

• India

• Australia

• United Arab Emirates

OpenAI said in 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 applies only to data at rest, not while it moves through a system or when it is used for inference. OpenAI’s documentation notes that, for now, inference residency remains available only in the U.S.  

ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu users can set up new workspaces with data residency. Enterprise customers on the API who have been approved for advanced data controls can enable data residency by creating a new project and selecting their preferred region.

OpenAI first began offering data residency in Europe in February this year. The European Union has some of the strictest data regulations globally, based on the GDPR. 

The importance of data residency

Enterprises until now had fewer choices for processing data flowing through ChatGPT. For example, some organizational data would be processed under U.S. law rather than under European rules. 

Enterprises risk violating data compliance rules if their data at rest is processed elsewhere and does not meet strict policies. 

“With over 1 million business customers around the world directly using OpenAI, we have expanded where we offer data residency — allowing business customers to store data in certain regions, helping organizations meet local regulatory and data protection requirements,” the company said in its blog post. 

However, enterprises must also understand that if they are using a connector or integration within ChatGPT, those applications have different data residency rules. When OpenAI launched company knowledge for ChatGPT, it warned users that depending on the connector they use, data residency may be limited to the U.S.