European Union lawmakers in the European Parliament have given their approval to groundbreaking regulations for artificial intelligence (AI) in a preliminary agreement. This paves the way for the world’s first legislation focused on AI, with a parliamentary vote set to take place in April.
The Internal Market and Civil Liberties Committees voted 71-8 in favor of endorsing the provisional agreement on the AI Act. The act aims to establish guidelines for AI across various industries, including banking, automotive, electronics, aviation, security, and law enforcement.
These regulations will oversee foundational models or generative AI, which are trained on extensive data sets, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The AI Act seeks to establish safeguards in response to generative AI models, including copyright protection for creators. It also prohibits AI applications that pose a threat to citizens’ rights, such as biometric categorization and social scoring.
The endorsement comes after EU member states approved the agreement, following France’s withdrawal of its objection. This led to concessions being made to reduce the administrative burden on high-risk AI systems and provide enhanced protection for business secrets.
Efforts have been made to transform the agreed-upon positions into a final compromise text for approval by lawmakers since the political agreement in December 2023. This culminated in the “coreper” vote on Feb. 2, which involved the permanent representatives of all member states.
The European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties hailed the endorsement as a significant step forward for AI in a post on the X social platform.
The AI Act will now proceed to the European Parliament for a vote in March or April. If passed, it is expected to be fully implemented 24 months after coming into force, with specific provisions taking effect earlier.
In November 2023, a group of businesses and tech companies signed a joint letter to EU regulators, warning against excessive regulation of robust AI systems at the expense of innovation. The letter, signed by 33 companies operating in the EU, highlighted that overly strict regulations on foundational models and general-purpose AI could discourage vital innovation in the region.
The European Commission is taking action to establish an AI Office to monitor compliance with a group of high-impact foundational models that are considered to have systemic risks. Additionally, measures have been unveiled to support local AI developers, such as upgrading the EU’s supercomputer network for generative AI model training.
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