Jan Franz Nygaard

Vibeke Binz Vallevik, Anne Kjersti C. Befring, Severin Elvatun et al.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform healthcare, but it requires access to health data. Synthetic data that is generated through machine learning models trained on real data, offers a way to share data while preserving privacy. However, uncertainties in the practical application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) create an administrative burden, limiting the benefits of synthetic data. Through a systematic analysis of relevant legal sources and an empirical study, this article explores whether synthetic data should be classified as personal data under the GDPR. The study investigates the residual identification risk through generating synthetic data and simulating inference attacks, challenging common perceptions of technical identification risk. The findings suggest synthetic data is likely anonymous, depending on certain factors, but highlights uncertainties about what constitutes reasonably likely risk. To promote innovation, the study calls for clearer regulations to balance privacy protection with the advancement of AI in healthcare.

Vibeke Binz Vallevik, Serena Elizabeth Marshall, Aleksandar Babic et al.

Synthetic data is emerging as a cost-effective solution necessary to meet the increasing data demands of AI development, created either from existing knowledge or derived from real data. The traditional classification of synthetic data types into hybrid, partial or fully synthetic datasets has limited value and does not reflect the ever-increasing methods to generate synthetic data. The generation method and their source jointly shape the characteristics of synthetic data, which in turn determines its practical applications. We make a case for an alternative approach to grouping synthetic data types that better reflect privacy perspectives in order to facilitate regulatory guidance in the generation and processing of synthetic data. This approach to classification provides flexibility to new advancements like deep generative methods and offers a more practical framework for future applications.