On Friday, December 8, negotiators from the European Parliament and Council came to a provisional agreement about the guidelines governing the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
The agreement addresses the use of AI by the government for biometric monitoring, the regulation of AI platforms like ChatGPT, and the need for transparency before entering the market. This includes exchanging training content summaries, adhering to EU copyright, and technical papers.
The EU aspires to be the first supranational body to enact legislation governing AI, outlining its responsible applications while limiting potential hazards. After over twenty-four hours of debate on December 8 and fifteen hours of negotiating, the agreement was reached.
According to the agreement, AI models that pose systemic or severe impact concerns must be evaluated and addressed, adversarial testing for system resilience must be done, incidents must be reported to the European Commission, cybersecurity must be maintained, and energy efficiency must be disclosed.
“The Parliament will closely monitor the support of new business ideas with sandboxes and effective regulations for the most potent models—proper implementation will be crucial.”
Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for Internal Market, wrote on X, the former Twitter platform, following the agreement: “Historic! The #AIAct provides a springboard for EU researchers and companies to dominate the global AI race, far beyond just a set of regulations. The greatest is still to come!
The agreement states that risks associated with general-purpose artificial intelligence must adhere to codes. Only in limited situations, such as certain crimes or serious threats in public areas, can governments employ real-time biometric surveillance.
The agreement prohibits social scoring, cognitive behavioural manipulation, the use of facial picture scraping from the internet or CCTV footage, and the use of biometric technology to infer personal information such as orientation and beliefs. Customers would be able to lodge complaints and get clarifications.
Depending on the infringement and scale of the organisation, fines for infractions might be as high as 35 million euros ($37.7 million), or 7% of worldwide turnover, or as low as 7.5 million euros ($8.1 million), or 1.5% of turnover.
The approved draft will now need to be formally adopted by the parliament and council in order to become EU law, according to the European Parliament’s statement. At a later meeting, the internal market and civil liberties committees of the parliament will vote on the deal.