Last week- after negotiations lasting three days -the negotiators of the EU Parliament and the EU Council agreed upon the law about artificial intelligence ( AI Act ) . Accordingly the law implements precise regulations for the use of AI system in the frame of the EU.
The process for the AI Act dates back to April 2021, when the EU Commission proposed to ensure a safe use of AI systems in the EU territory and thus to protect the basic rights of the EU citizens . The Council and the EU Parliament uniformly divided the systems in three risky groups.
For the systems, evaluated as the most risky, in future very strict rules will be valid in the matters of risk management, transparency and cyber security. A precise documentation should be necessary regarding the training and testing of AI models, this documentation would need to prove the use of the valid regulations.
Regarding the use of systems with minimal risk for the safety of the population ( for instance video games ) there will be no special demands.
Per se will be forbidden AI systems, which risk will be evaluated as unacceptable. Therefore the system Social Scoring, known from China, with which the character of a person is judged, will be forbidden. The permit for a biometrical identification on spot will be approved only in special cases, when there could be a possibility for a body or life danger and a specific person would be searched for.
A special body will be established in the frame of the EU Commission, it will control and implement the new regulations.
The EU AI legislation gave an important sign for a responsible and ethic behaviour towards one of the actually most decision making technologies in the world and was therefore accepted positively. However some members- f.i. France and Germany – criticised strict rules , which are supposed to create limitations for innovations.
Within next weeks all technical details will be finalised, they should be confirmed by the EU Council and the Parliament, it was however uniformly agreed that the law would start to be valid within two years after its adoption.