EU leader Ursula von der Leyen praises the AI Act as a “global first” that will protect companies’ and individuals’ rights.
The most ambitious set of regulations to date for regulating the use of this transformative technology will be made possible by lawmakers in the European Union reaching a major agreement on laws governing artificial intelligence (AI).
The “AI Act” was approved on Friday following roughly 38 hours of talks between legislators and decision-makers.
“The AI Act is a first for the world. EU head Ursula von der Leyen said, “A unique legal framework for the development of AI you can trust.”
“And for people’s and businesses’ safety and fundamental rights. We fulfilled the promise we made in our political guidelines. I applaud the political accord reached today.
The EU’s executive branch first proposed the “AI Act” in 2021, but since OpenAI’s ChatGPT was released last year and brought the quickly evolving area of AI into the public eye, legislative efforts to pass it have quickened.
The law is regarded by many as a global standard for countries looking to benefit from AI’s potential advantages while avoiding concerns including job displacement, misinformation, and copyright infringement.
The law will now be sent to member states and the EU parliament for ratification after being delayed by disagreements about the regulation of language models that scrape internet data and the use of AI by police and intelligence services.
The rule will force tech businesses operating in the EU to reveal the data used for product testing and AI system training, particularly for high-risk applications like healthcare and self-driving cars.
The law prohibits the indiscriminate scraping of surveillance footage or photographs from the internet to build databases for facial recognition technology, but it provides an exception for police enforcement using “real-time” face recognition technology to look into major crimes and acts of terrorism.
Tech companies that violate laws may be fined up to 7% of their worldwide turnover, depending on the severity of the offence and the size of the company.
Amidst an increasingly fragmented worldwide landscape of guidelines and laws, the EU bill is regarded as the most comprehensive attempt to date to control AI.
AI’s effects on discrimination and national security were the subject of an executive order signed by US President Joe Biden in October. Meanwhile, China implemented laws mandating that AI adhere to “socialist core values.”
Other nations, like the UK and Japan, have approached regulation mainly with a hands-off attitude.
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