The EU reached a provisional deal on the AI Act on December 8, 2023, following record-breaking 36-hour-long ‘trilogue’ negotiations between the EU Council, the EU Commission and the European Parliament.
The landmark bill will regulate the use of AI systems, including generative AI models like ChatGPT and AI systems used by governments and in law enforcement operations, including for biometric surveillance.
The Tiered Approach Maintained
The final draft maintained the tiered approach regarding the measures control foundational models, with horizontal obligations for all models and special treatments for ‘high risk’ and ‘unacceptable risk’ AI practices.
All foundational AI providers will need to make their models transparent and publish a detailed summary of the training data “without prejudice of trade secrets.”
AI-generated content will have to be immediately recognizable.
The ‘high-risk’ AI practices will be strictly regulated, with obligations like model evaluation, assessing and keeping track of systemic risks, cybersecurity protections and reporting on the model’s energy consumption.
The provisional agreement also provides for a fundamental rights impact assessment before its deployers put a high-risk AI system on the market.
The ‘unacceptable risk’ ones will be banned. These include manipulative techniques, systems exploiting vulnerabilities, social scoring, and indiscriminate scraping of facial images.
An automatic categorization as ‘systemic’ for models trained with computing power above 10-25 floating point operations was also added.
Gaurav Kapoor, co-CEO and co-founder of compliance solutions provider MetricStream, praised the agreement.
“I believe this legislation is a crucial step forward in ensuring the responsible and beneficial development and use of AI. The EU AI Act sets out a comprehensive framework that attempts to strike the right balance between promoting innovation and protecting fundamental rights and preventing malfeasance,” he told Infosecurity.
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