Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Brussels is readying new guidance on banned uses of artificial intelligence under its landmark legislation regulating the technology, pushing ahead with enforcement of its AI Act even as Donald Trump warns of retribution for the EU’s targeting of US tech companies.
The law, passed in 2023, is considered the world’s most comprehensive regulatory framework for AI. Provisions banning certain applications, such as scraping the internet to create facial recognition databases, came into force on Sunday.
The European Commission is set to publish crucial guidance on how these rules should be applied by companies on Tuesday, officials said. Further provisions targeting large AI models and AI-powered products that pose a high risk to users, such as healthcare, will be rolled out between now and 2027.
The continued push to enforce the rules comes amid broader European debate over how aggressively the bloc should enforce its digital rules in the face of a fierce backlash from Big Tech companies supported by the new US president.
Trump has threatened to target Brussels in response to fines imposed on US companies. The EU has already moved to “reassess” probes into companies such as Apple, Meta and Google under other legislation aimed at protecting the continent’s digital markets.
“There is definitely a worry in Brussels that the new US president will raise pressure on the EU around the AI Act to ensure that US companies don’t have to deal with too much red tape, or potentially even fines,” said Patrick Van Eecke, co-chair of law firm Cooley’s global cyber, data and privacy practice.
The act requires companies building “high-risk” AI systems to be more transparent about how they build and use AI models. Those behind the most powerful models face additional requirements, such as conducting risk assessments. Companies that fail to comply with the law face huge fines and could be banned from the EU.
Brussels’ ambition to position itself as “the global hub for trustworthy AI” has long been challenged by Big Tech groups. Companies such as Facebook owner Meta have explicitly warned that Europe’s stringent regulation could stifle AI investment and innovation.
Big Tech companies oppose the AI Act’s “onerous” provisions on providing more transparency for data. This includes rules allowing third parties access to the code of AI models to assess risks, as well as the AI Act’s exceptions to some safety rules for open source companies and smaller start-ups, the person close to the process said.
Earlier this month, Trump warned that he regarded any moves by Brussels against US companies as “a form of taxation . . . We have some very big complaints with the EU,” he said in remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
During his first week in office, Trump has touted a $500bn AI infrastructure project dubbed Stargate led by Japan’s SoftBank and San Francisco-based OpenAI. He has criticised efforts to regulate AI, signing executive orders that eliminate many guardrails around the development of the technology.
One senior EU official involved in the AI Act’s implementation told the Financial Times that the commission acknowledged Trump’s veiled threat and the US pressure but insisted that the law as passed would not be altered.
“What we can do is ensure that it is as innovation-friendly as possible, and that’s what we’re doing right now,” the official said. “There’s flexibility in the rules and we’re looking and how we use that.”
Since Trump’s inauguration, the narrative around tech regulation has also shifted in Brussels, said Caterina Rodelli, an EU policy analyst at digital rights group Access Now. The group has been lobbying for the AI Act’s bans to be stronger. “What we thought was closed business is actually not,” she said.
“We see room for regulators to loosen their approach to the implementation of the AI Act, and the prohibition implementation will be the first testing ground,” Rodelli said, adding there was a risk that a new deregulatory approach would water the rules down until they were essentially meaningless.
The EU prohibitions announced on Sunday were clear-cut, said a person close to the process, with many Big Tech companies already in compliance.
Causing additional tension in Brussels are negotiations around the Code of Practice for general-purpose AI, affecting powerful AI models such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4, the person said. The code will detail how companies can implement the rules of the AI Act in practice.
The negotiations, which involve hundreds of participants and are co-ordinated by the commission’s AI Office, will end in April.
Read the full article here
