EU Approves Landmark Act to Regulate AI

Facts

• The EU parliament on Wednesday passed the Artificial Intelligence Act with an overwhelming 523-46 majority. Lawmakers say the legislation will ensure 'safety and compliance with fundamental rights', as well as foster innovation.¹
• According to senior EU officials, the law will protect citizens from the risks of the rapidly evolving technology. The act's text is expected to be approved in April, before being published in the EU's Official Journal in May or June.²
• A consensus on the act, first proposed in 2021, was reached last December, as some nations had earlier advocated self-regulation over government-led restrictions. It now divides AI into 'unacceptable,' 'high,' 'medium,' and 'low' hazard categories.³
• The legislation mandates that both general-purpose and high-risk AI models must conform to the EU's transparency and copyright rules, while banning the government's use of AI for predictive policing and real-time facial recognition in public spaces.⁴
• The law also requires all AI-generated deepfakes to be clearly labeled, a measure reportedly aimed at curbing the possibility of disinformation and election meddling.⁵
• While China has already brought in laws on AI, and the US ordered developers to share data with the government last October, the EU's AI Act is reportedly the world's first to impose binding restrictions to 'mitigate AI risks.'⁶

Sources: ¹Europarl, ²France 24, ³CNBC, ⁴Al Jazeera, ⁵CNN and ⁶BBC News.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Techzine Europe. Even though the EU parliament has unambiguously passed the transformative AI Act, doubts are bound to linger over its provisions and their implications, especially given the dynamic nature of artificial intelligence at this stage of its evolution. The good news is that a framework is now ready to guide and regulate the field, even if it requires tweaking on the go. The arrival of these new rules will pep up business confidence, for the primary idea behind it is to lay a foundation that provides basic protection and a trustworthy system to work within.
• Narrative B, as provided by Bloomberg. The restrictive atmosphere that the EU's new AI Act is bound to create is expected to be a huge dampener for Europe's technology sector, especially its AI-based startups. Additionally, there are deep concerns over the influence that Big Tech, like Microsoft, may have had in creating this law. This risks killing the competitiveness of Europe's businesses, which are, in any case, considered to be far behind AI power blocs like the US and China.

Predictions