The European Parliament ready to negotiate the first law on artificial intelligence

The European Parliament adopted its negotiating position on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Law on Thursday by 499 votes in favour, 28 against and 93 abstentions, and so consultation will begin with the Member States from which the final text of the law will emerge. The regulation must guarantee that the AI ​​developed and used in Europe fully conforms to our rights and values, respecting requirements such as human supervision, security, privacy, transparency, non-discrimination or social and environmental well-being.

Prohibited practices

The standards are focused on preventing risks, and set obligations for providers and those who deploy AI-based tools based on the level of risk that artificial intelligence may present. AI systems that present an unacceptable level for the safety of people, such as those used for social scoring systems (ranking people based on their behaviour or personal characteristics), would be totally prohibited. MEPs have expanded the list proposed by the European Commission, adding prohibitions that refer to intrusive and discriminatory uses of AI, such as:

remote biometric identification systems, in real time, in public spaces;

remote biometric identification systems, a posteriori, with the sole exception of police use in investigations of serious crimes and with judicial authorisation;

biometric categorisation systems that use certain identity characteristics (eg gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, religion or political orientation);

predictive policing systems (based on profiling, location or criminal history);

emotion recognition systems by security forces, in border management, workplaces or educational institutions; and

the indiscriminate tracking of facial images taken from the Internet or closed circuit television to create facial recognition databases (which violate human rights and the right to privacy).

High risk artificial intelligence

MEPs have ensured that the classification of high-risk applications also includes AI systems that can significantly affect the environment or the health, safety or fundamental rights of people. AI systems used to influence voters and election outcome and recommender systems used by social media platforms (with over 45 million users) have been added to the list.

Obligations for General Purpose AI

Foundation model providers – a rapidly advancing AI innovation – will need to assess and mitigate potential risks (to health, safety, fundamental rights, the environment, democracy and the rule of law) and register their models in the EU database before placing them on the market in the EU. Generative AI systems based on these models, such as ChatGPT, will have to meet additional requirements for transparency—identify content as AI-generated, to help, among other things, distinguish fakes from authentic images—and be designed accordingly so that they cannot generate illegal content. In addition, detailed summaries of the copyrighted data used in its development should be published.

Support innovation and protect individual rights

To drive AI innovation and support SMEs, MEPs added research projects and AI components supplied under open source licenses as exceptions. The new law promotes so-called “controlled sandboxes”, or real environments in which companies can test artificial intelligence under the supervision of public authorities before going to market.

Finally, the European Parliament wants to make it easier for citizens to submit claims about these systems and obtain explanations about decisions generated by high-risk systems that significantly undermine our fundamental rights. MEPs have also reformed the role of the European Office for Artificial Intelligence, which would be tasked with overseeing the way the AI ​​regulatory code is applied.

Declarations of the co-presenters

After the vote, Brando Benifei (S&D, Italy) made the following statements: “Everyone is watching us today. While the big tech companies warn about the consequences of their own creations, Europe has taken the initiative and proposed a concrete response to the risks that AI is beginning to generate. We want the positive potential of this tool for creativity and productivity to be under control. We will defend our position, in the interests of democracy and freedoms, during negotiations with the Council.”

For his part, Dragos Tudorache (Renew, Romania), declared the following: «The Law on artificial intelligence will set the course worldwide for the development and governance of this tool, guaranteeing that the technology that will radically transform our societies evolves and it is used in a manner consistent with the European values ​​of democracy, fundamental rights and the rule of law.”

Next steps

Negotiations with the Council on the final form have now started.

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