"Europeans Take a Major Step Toward Regulating A.I.", 14 June 2023

The European Union took an important step... toward passing what would be one of the first major laws to regulate artificial intelligence, a potential model for policymakers around the world as they grapple with how to put guardrails on the rapidly developing technology.

The European Parliament, a main legislative branch of the European Union, passed a draft law known as the A.I. Act, which would put new restrictions on what are seen as the technology’s riskiest uses. It would severely curtail uses of facial recognition software, while requiring makers of A.I. systems like the ChatGPT chatbot to disclose more about the data used to create their programs.

The vote is one step in a longer process. A final version of the law is not expected to be passed until later this year.

Policymakers everywhere from Washington to Beijing are now racing to control an evolving technology that is alarming even some of its earliest creators.

How effective any regulation of A.I. can be is unclear. In a sign that the technology’s new abilities are emerging seemingly faster than lawmakers are able to address them, earlier versions of the E.U. law did not give much attention to so-called generative A.I. systems like ChatGPT, which can produce text, images and video in response to prompts.

Under the latest version of Europe’s bill passed..., generative A.I. would face new transparency requirements. That includes publishing summaries of copyrighted material used for training the system, a proposal supported by the publishing industry but opposed by tech developers as technically infeasible. Makers of generative A.I. systems would also have to put safeguards in place to prevent them from generating illegal content.

The European bill takes a “risk-based” approach to regulating A.I., focusing on applications with the greatest potential for human harm. This would include where A.I. systems were used to operate critical infrastructure like water or energy, in the legal system, and when determining access to public services and government benefits. Makers of the technology would have to conduct risk assessments before putting the tech into everyday use, akin to the drug approval process.

A tech industry group, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said the European Union should avoid overly broad regulations that inhibit innovation.

One major area of debate is the use of facial recognition. The European Parliament voted to ban uses of live facial recognition, but questions remain about whether exemptions should be allowed for national security and other law enforcement purposes.

Another provision would ban companies from scraping biometric data from social media to build out databases, a practice that drew scrutiny after the facial-recognition company Clearview AI used it.

After the vote..., a final version of the law will be negotiated by representatives of the three branches of the European Union — the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. Officials said they hoped to reach a final agreement by the end of the year.