MILAN, (Reuters) - Italy's data protection agency said on Friday it had opened an investigation into a service developed by Microsoft-backed Open AI that can generate videos based on text prompts.

The regulator, known as Garante, asked Open AI to clarify whether the way it informs users and non users about the data it employs for its product, known as Sora, is in line with European Union regulations.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Italian regulator is one of the bloc's most proactive authorities in assessing AI platform compliance with the EU's data privacy regime. Last year it banned ChatGPT over alleged breaches of the bloc's privacy rules.

In its statement it did not level any specific accusation against OpenAI but said it was looking at the potential implications that Sora might have on the use of personal data in the EU and in Italy in particular.

Among other requests, it asked OpenAI to provide information on how the algorithm was trained, which data were collected and used to train it, and whether the service is already available to users in the EU and Italy.