Disasters & Accidents

EU agrees on world’s first legislation to regulate AI

Brussels, Dec 9 (EFE).- The European Union late on Friday agreed on a landmark legislation that regulates the use of artificial intelligence after marathon negotiations between the parliament and member states.

“The EU AI Act is a global first. A unique legal framework for the development of AI you can trust. And for the safety and fundamental rights of people and businesses,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X.

The agreement was reached after 37 hours of negotiations and will still have to be ratified by the European Parliament and the Council, the institution that represents European governments.

“It was long and intense, but the effort was worth it. Thanks to the European Parliament’s resilience, the world’s first horizontal legislation on artificial intelligence will keep the European promise – ensuring that rights and freedoms are at the center of the development of this ground-breaking technology,” said Italy’s co-rapporteur Brando Benifei.

One of the most sensitive points of the negotiations was the use of biometric identification cameras in public spaces.

The law bans untargeted scraping of images from the internet or CCTV to create facial recognition databases but some exemptions allow for the use of cameras to be used by law enforcement in “real-time” for investigating terrorism threats and serious crimes including trafficking, sexual exploitation, murder, kidnapping and rape.

During the negotiations, governments had pushed to expand the list of serious crimes, while the European Parliament tried to limit it as much as possible and obtain strong safeguards for fundamental rights.

The law also prohibits all biometric categorization systems based on political, religious or philosophical beliefs, race and sexual orientation.

Also banned is emotion recognition in the workplace and educational institutions, social scoring based on behavior or personal characteristics, AI systems that manipulate human behavior and AI used to exploit people’s vulnerabilities such as age, disability, social or economic situations.

The other big issue in the negotiations was the regulation of generative AI systems, on which models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are based.

They will have to meet transparency criteria, such as specifying whether a text, song or photograph has been generated through AI, and guarantee that the data used to train the systems respects copyright law.

The regulation allows or prohibits the use of AI depending on the risk it generates for people and identifies high-risk systems that can only be used if it is demonstrated that they respect fundamental rights. For example, those that can be used to influence the result of an election, and those used by financial institutions to evaluate solvency and establish credit ratings.

The law provides for the creation of the European Artificial Intelligence Office, which will coordinate the use of technology between national authorities and will be advised by a panel of scientists and civil society organizations.

It is scheduled to come into force in 2026 but will be applied in phases, starting with the immediate creation of the European office. EFE

drs/tw

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