European Union's negotiators approve new regulations for AI software and services

Late on Friday. Parliament and Council negotiators for the European Union approved new regulations for AI software and services, along with the companies that develop and offer generative AI products. The EU has become the first major world power to set up these kinds of regulations.

The EU's Artificial Intelligence Act will prohibit the use of AI for the following:

• Biometric categorisation systems that use sensitive characteristics (e.g. political, religious, philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, race)
• Untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases
• Emotion recognition in the workplace and educational institutions
• Social scoring based on social behaviour or personal characteristics
• AI systems that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent their free will
• AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to their age, disability, social or economic situation)

There will be some exceptions under these EU regulations for law enforcement. AI systems can be used to search for specific people who are victims of kidnapping, sexual exploitation or human trafficking. They can also be used to help prevent a terrorist attack, and law enforcement officials can use them to find suspected criminals for various crimes like kidnapping, murder, and more.

AI systems classified as general purpose must disclose summaries about the content they use for training, along with how they comply with EU copyright laws. They must also offer their technical documentation. AI systems that are considered to be high-impact will have more stringent laws to follow, including ways to mitigate systemic risks, reports on their energy efficiency, and more.

Companies that are found to violate these new regulations could be subject to fines ranging from 7.5 million to 35 million euros, depending on the severity of the violation and the size of the company.

The newly approved regulations will have to be voted on by the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Civil Liberties committees, followed by final votes by the Parliament and Council to become EU law.