EU parliament adopts ‘historic’ rules on AI
BRUSSELS: The European Parliament on Wednesday gave the final nod to far-reaching rules on artificial intelligence that the EU hopes will both harness innovation and defend against harms. The law, known as the “AI Act”, was first proposed in April 2021 by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. But it was only after Microsoft-funded ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022 that the real AI contest began— and also the race to regulate. China and the United States last year introduced regulation on AI but the European Union’s law is the most comprehensive.
The EU will take a staggered approach to applying the law. Outright bans on forms of AI considered highest-risk will kick in later this year, while rules on systems like ChatGPT will apply 12 months after the law enters into force, and the rest of the provisions in 2026. As EU negotiators debated the text, tensions within and lobbying from outside were at their highest over how to regulate general-purpose AI models, like chatbots. Developers of such models will have to give details about what content they used—such as text or images—to train their systems and comply with EU copyright law.
There are a greater set of requirements for models, for example OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT-4 and Google’s Gemini, that the EU says pose “systemic
risks.” Those risks could include causing serious accidents, being misused for far-reaching cyberattacks, or to propagate harmful biases online. Companies offering these technologies must assess and
mitigate the threats, track and report serious incidents—like deaths—to the commission, take action to ensure cybersecurity and give details about their models’ energy consumption. — AFP