On Friday, Europe achieved a preliminary agreement on groundbreaking European Union regulations addressing the use of artificial intelligence. This agreement also spans government applications of AI in biometric surveillance and the regulation of AI systems like ChatGPT.
EU flags – illustrative photo. Image credit: Guillaume Périgois via Unsplash, free license
This political consensus propels the EU towards becoming the first major global entity to establish laws governing AI.
The agreement was reached after nearly 15 hours of negotiations between EU member states and European Parliament representatives, following a nearly 24-hour debate the previous day.
Both sides will continue to work on refining the details in the coming days, potentially influencing the final shape of the legislation.
The agreement mandates that foundation models like ChatGPT and general-purpose AI systems (GPAI) must adhere to transparency requirements before entering the market. These requirements also require creating technical documentation, compliance with EU copyright laws, and providing detailed summaries about the content used for training.
High-impact foundation models posing systemic risks are obligated to undergo model evaluations, assess and mitigate systemic risks, conduct adversarial testing, report serious incidents to the European Commission, ensure cybersecurity, and disclose information on energy efficiency.
GPAIs with systemic risks may choose to adhere to codes of practice to meet the new regulatory standards.
Governments are limited to using real-time biometric surveillance in public spaces under specific conditions, such as cases involving victims of certain crimes, prevention of genuine and imminent threats like terrorist attacks, and searches for individuals suspected of the most serious crimes.
The agreement explicitly prohibits cognitive behavioral manipulation, untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage, social scoring, and biometric categorization systems aimed at inferring political, religious, philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, and race.
Consumers would be granted the right to file complaints and receive meaningful explanations, with fines for violations ranging from 7.5 million euros ($8.1 million) or 1.5% of turnover to 35 million euros or 7% of global turnover.
The legislation is anticipated to come into effect early next year, following formal ratification by both sides, and is slated to be applicable two years thereafter.
Written by Alius Noreika