EU Parliament approves AI Act with large majority
"Artificial Intelligence Act: MEPs adopt landmark law"
On Wednesday, Parliament approved the Artificial Intelligence Act that ensures safety and compliance with fundamental rights, while boosting innovation.
The regulation, agreed in negotiations with member states in December 2023, was endorsed by MEPs with 523 votes in favour, 46 against and 49 abstentions.
It aims to protect fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability from high-risk AI, while boosting innovation and establishing Europe as a leader in the field. The regulation establishes obligations for AI based on its potential risks and level of impact.
The new rules ban certain AI applications that threaten citizens’ rights, including biometric categorisation systems based on sensitive characteristics and untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases...
The use of biometric identification systems (RBI) by law enforcement is prohibited in principle, except in exhaustively listed and narrowly defined situations...
Clear obligations are also foreseen for other high-risk AI systems (due to their significant potential harm to health, safety, fundamental rights, environment, democracy and the rule of law). Examples of high-risk AI uses include critical infrastructure, education and vocational training, employment, essential private and public services (e.g. healthcare, banking), certain systems in law enforcement, migration and border management, justice and democratic processes (e.g. influencing elections). Such systems must assess and reduce risks, maintain use logs, be transparent and accurate, and ensure human oversight. Citizens will have a right to submit complaints about AI systems and receive explanations about decisions based on high-risk AI systems that affect their rights.
#AIAct Despite the big pronouncements about the EU overcoming lobbying efforts to pass 'the world's 1st comprehensive' rules for AI, the AI Act is a failure from a human rights perspective & a victory for industry & police
— Daniel Leufer (@djleufer) March 13, 2024
Read @accessnow's take here: https://t.co/KgWog9nHsn https://t.co/J27GWvWZMP
General-purpose AI (GPAI) systems, and the GPAI models they are based on, must meet certain transparency requirements...
The regulation is still subject to a final lawyer-linguist check and is expected to be finally adopted before the end of the legislature (through the so-called corrigendum procedure). The law also needs to be formally endorsed by the Council.
It will enter into force twenty days after its publication in the official Journal, and be fully applicable 24 months after its entry into force...