OpenAI has recently expanded its data residency regions, allowing enterprise users to choose where their data is stored and processed based on local laws and regulations. This move addresses compliance barriers faced by many global companies when deploying ChatGPT at scale. Data residency, often overlooked in enterprise AI applications, is a critical factor in ensuring that data is processed and managed within the legal and cultural framework of the location where it is stored.

OpenAI, artificial intelligence, AI

Currently, subscribers of ChatGPT Enterprise and Education versions can choose from the following regions to store their data: Europe (including the European Economic Area and Switzerland), the UK, the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Australia, and the UAE. OpenAI mentioned in its blog that more regions will be added gradually in the future. Users can store data including conversation records, uploaded files, custom GPTs, and generated images. However, this service applies only to static data and not to data processing during transmission or for inference. According to OpenAI's documentation, the current inference residency options are still limited to the United States.

ChatGPT enterprise and education users can set up new workspaces to meet the requirements for data residency. For API enterprise customers who have advanced data control, they can enable data residency by creating a new project and selecting the desired region. OpenAI first introduced data residency services in Europe in February of this year, which is particularly important given the EU's strictest data regulatory standards globally, such as GDPR.

Before this, enterprises had limited choices when dealing with data flowing through ChatGPT. For example, some organizations processed data according to US laws rather than European regulations. If static data is processed elsewhere, enterprises may face risks of violating data compliance regulations. OpenAI stated in its blog: "With over 1 million enterprise customers directly using our service worldwide, we are expanding our data residency options to help our enterprise customers store data in specific regions to meet local regulatory and data protection requirements."

However, enterprises must also be aware that if they use connectors or integrations within ChatGPT, the data display rules of these applications may differ. When OpenAI launched the Company Knowledge feature, it warned users that data residency might be limited to the US depending on the connector used.

Key Points:

🌍 Expansion of data residency regions to support compliant data handling for enterprises.  

🔐 ChatGPT Enterprise and Education version users can choose multiple regions to store data.  

⚖️ Be aware of different data residency rules when using different connectors.