The incoming European Parliament is gearing up to introduce AI liability rules alongside the recently adopted AI Act which was approved earlier this year. This signifies a major step forward in the governance of artificial intelligence within the EU. Despite concerns from the tech industry about potential regulatory burdens, this initiative is largely seen as a positive development, aimed at bolstering consumer protections and ensuring the safe and ethical deployment of AI technologies.

The AI Act, which was endorsed by a significant majority in the European Parliament, lays down harmonised rules to ensure AI systems used in Europe align with EU values such as human oversight, safety, privacy, transparency, non-discrimination, and social and environmental well-being. The legislation adopts a risk-based approach, categorising AI systems according to the level of risk they pose. Notably, it prohibits AI practices deemed to have an unacceptable risk, such as social scoring and real-time biometric identification in public spaces.

Additionally, the Act introduces stringent requirements for high-risk AI applications, including those that could impact voter behaviour or are used by major social media platforms. Generative AI systems, like ChatGPT, will need to comply with new transparency requirements, ensuring users are aware when content is AI-generated and providing safeguards against the creation of illegal content. Providers must also publicly disclose summaries of the copyrighted data used to train these models.

The proposed AI Liability Directive aims to modernise existing laws, ensuring they are fit for the digital age. This directive will provide clear mechanisms for redress and accountability, strengthening consumer protections and fostering trust in AI technologies. This comprehensive approach is intended to support innovation while maintaining high standards of safety and ethical responsibility.

Next steps

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 it enters into force, except for bans on prohibited practises, which will apply six months after the entry into force date; codes of practise (nine months after entry into force); general-purpose AI rules including governance (12 months after entry into force); and obligations for high-risk systems (36 months).

For more information, you can read the full articles on Euronews and the European Parliament’s official site.

Source: European Parliament

Image source: The untargeted scraping of facial images from CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases will be banned © Alexander / Adobe Stock