EU international locations greenlight landmark new AI legal guidelines | EUROtoday

Issued on: 02/02/2024 – 18:26Modified: 02/02/2024 – 18:30

2 min

Brussels first proposed an AI legislation again in 2021 however spent most of final 12 months racing to greenlight the draft textual content after chatbot ChatGPT exploded onto the scene.

EU states and lawmakers had agreed on a set of draft guidelines in December, billed because the world’s first complete legal guidelines to control AI, and their approval after that ought to have been a formality.

But some international locations, together with France and Germany, flagged issues that raised fears the AI legislation would fail within the ultimate stretch — resulting in a brand new spherical of talks on its contents.

EU ambassadors lastly signed off on the textual content throughout a gathering Friday in Brussels, after French and German issues have been soothed.

“We are very happy to announce that … ambassadors just unanimously confirmed the final compromise text found on the proposal on harmonised rules on artificial intelligence,” Belgium, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, mentioned.

The EU’s high tech enforcer, Thierry Breton, hailed the “historical, world-first, pioneering” guidelines.

“The AI Act unleashed a lot of passion … and rightly so! Today member states endorsed the political agreement reached in December — recognising the perfect balance found by the negotiators between innovation and safety,” he mentioned.

Paris had been notably eager for the legislation to guard AI start-ups in a bid to make sure the foundations don’t prohibit future “European AI champions”.

ChatGPT has demonstrated AI’s dizzying advances and confirmed that the expertise — generative AI — poses many threats however may additionally unleash new alternatives.

The easily-accessible chatbot from US-based OpenAI may create eloquent essays and passionate poetry inside seconds, in addition to go medical and authorized exams.

Generative AI software program, which additionally consists of Google’s chatbot Bard, can rapidly produce textual content, pictures and audio from easy instructions in on a regular basis language.

The European Parliament is because of vote on the textual content in March or April, earlier than it turns into legislation. It ought to then be formally permitted in May.

The legislation is not going to enter into pressure instantly, nonetheless. Some guidelines will apply inside six months whereas different components of the legislation will kick in two years later.

CCIA, one of many primary tech lobbying teams, mentioned Friday’s approval was an “important step” for the textual content’s formal adoption however remained cautious.

“Despite efforts to improve the final text, after ‘victory’ was prematurely declared back in December, many of the new AI rules remain unclear and could slow down the development and roll-out of innovative AI applications in Europe,” CCIA Europe’s senior coverage supervisor, Boniface de Champris, mentioned.

(AFP)