On 14 June 2023, The European Parliament adopted its negotiating position on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act. The rules would ensure that AI developed and used in Europe is fully in line with EU rights and values. These values include human oversight, safety, privacy, transparency, non-discrimination, and social and environmental wellbeing. The rules will now be negotiated with EU member states.
- The AI Act is a proposed regulation that would govern the development and use of AI in the European Union.
- The Act would establish a risk-based framework for AI systems, with different requirements for different levels of risk.
- The Act would also include provisions on human oversight, safety, privacy, transparency, non-discrimination, and social and environmental wellbeing.
- The adoption of the negotiating position by the European Parliament is a significant step forward in the development of the AI Act.
- The next step is for the Act to be negotiated with EU member states.
AI systems with an unacceptable level of risk to people’s safety, such as those used for social scoring, will be prohibited.
- Intrusive and discriminatory uses of AI, such as:
- “Real-time” remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces
- “Post” remote biometric identification systems, with the only exception of law enforcement for the prosecution of serious crimes and only after judicial authorization
- biometric categorisation systems using sensitive characteristics (e.g. gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, religion, political orientation)
- predictive policing systems (based on profiling, location or past criminal behaviour)
- emotion recognition systems in law enforcement, border management, the workplace, and educational institutions
- untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases
- AI systems used to influence voters and the outcome of elections and in recommender systems used by social media platforms (with over 45 million users) will be classified as high-risk.
Some other key points to remember include:
- Providers of foundation models would have to assess and mitigate possible risks and register their models in the EU database before their release on the EU market.
- Generative AI systems based on such models would have to comply with transparency requirements and ensure safeguards against generating illegal content.
- Detailed summaries of the copyrighted data used for their training would also have to be made publicly available.
- To boost AI innovation and support SMEs, MEPs added exemptions for research activities and AI components provided under open-source licenses.
- The new law promotes so-called regulatory sandboxes, or real-life environments, established by public authorities to test AI before it is deployed.
- Finally, MEPs want to boost citizens’ right to file complaints about AI systems and receive explanations of decisions based on high-risk AI systems that significantly impact their fundamental rights.