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Comment by reaperman | Hacker News Reader

Does OpenAI block Saudi or does Saudi block ChatGPT? When I lived there, many many websites were blocked by Saudi, particularly anything to do with Islam. If OpenAI is blocking Saudi, it may be legal compliance as OpenAI is likely not yet confident in their ability to filter conversations about religion in regions where that would be effectively banned.

Saudi is currently working very, very hard to limit the spread and influence of extremism within their borders, so they're careful about which resources for learning about islam are available.

Both Saudi and OpenAI seem to be ultra-aggressive about blocking VPN's such as Mullvad. There are other options for getting your own servers/VPNs that you can put OpenVPN on. When I lived in Saudi I did that, and it got around 100% of the most aggressive internet filters.

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OpenAI does not offer its services in Saudi Arabia. Saudis are blocked from registering. It's not a government block which works entirely differently and shows you a page explaining that it is blocked.

If it's blocked for political reasons I'd like to understand why, so we can understand their values that allow all those countries on the list but not Saudi.

I was able to register with a US phone number and VPN, but I'm also blocked from actually paying to get an API key.

I find the worry about compliance a thin excuse since a larger company like Microsoft that does have presence in the country offers Bing without issue. Same with SnapChat which has signifianct Saudi investmnet.

I believe it's some kind of misguided political activism.

You've insinuated that any block done by OpenAI would be for political reasons, but would you accept that perhaps they feel they would be breaking law in Saudi Arabia? So, "legal reasons", rather than political.

Does Bing offer their chat AI in Saudi? Or just search results. Search results are easy to filter and have a whole framework for compliance in GCC countries that is relatively straightforward to follow.

My insinuation of a political reason come after a glaring exclusion and complete silence when asked. Answering the question would help clarify their position.

Yes I'm talking about Bing's chat AI. There is absolutely no indication or precedent for legal concern.

I know people who work at Saudi Authority for Data and AI. They have no idea why we're blocked, while UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman can use it.

They've been holding regular AI talks and hackathons to grow the local talent. But we don't have access to GPT4 API and it's holding us back.

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