EU Okays Deal On Landmark AI Act

European Union (EU) policymakers have agreed to a provisional deal on landmark rules governing the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

Svenja Hahn, German MEP and shadow rapporteur for the European AI Act, on behalf of the liberal Renew Europe group, stated: "In 38 hours of negotiations over three days, we were able to prevent massive overregulation of AI innovation and safeguard rule of law principles in the use of AI in law enforcement." I Photo: Svenja Hahn

This includes the use by governments of AI in biometric surveillance and how to regulate AI systems such as ChatGPT. Supantha Mukherjee, Martin Coulter, and Foo Yun Chee reported for Reuters.

Svenja Hahn, German MEP and shadow rapporteur for the European AI Act, on behalf of the liberal Renew Europe group, stated: "In 38 hours of negotiations over three days, we were able to prevent massive overregulation of AI innovation and safeguard rule of law principles in the use of AI in law enforcement. We succeeded in preventing biometric mass surveillance. Despite an uphill battle over several days of negotiations, it was not possible to achieve a complete ban on real-time biometric identification against the massive headwind from the member-states.”

Fritz-Ulli Pieper, a specialist in IT law at Taylor Wessing, said: "Many points still need to be further worked on in technical trilogue. No one knows how the final wording will look like and if or how you can really push the current agreement in a final law text. The devil will be in the detail of the final text. There are many areas where they had to make amends. For example, GenAI models are still in scope but more limited and graded than initially, or exceptions for open source, but with transparency and copyright obligations.”

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