On Thursday 11th May, the EU’s Internal Market Committee and Civil Liberties Committee adopted a draft negotiating mandate for the bloc’s proposed Artificial Intelligence Act.
MEPs have made several amendments to the Commission’s proposal, expanding the list of prohibited artificial intelligence (AI) practices and the classification of “high-risk areas”, adding exemptions to these rules for research activities, and introducing additional obligations for providers of large language models (LLM).
Prohibited AI practices are now set to include real-time biometric identification systems in public places, as well as “post” remote biometric identification systems, with an exception made for the prosecution of serious crimes.
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Biometric categorisation systems (using protected and sensitive characteristics), predictive policing systems, and emotion recognition systems are also set to be banned.
MEPs also wish to prohibit indiscriminate scraping of biometric data from social media or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases – which would violate human rights and the right to privacy.
Expanded definition of high-risk AI
MEPs expanded the definition of “high-risk areas” to include harm to people’s health, safety, fundamental rights or the environment. They also added AI systems designed to influence voters in political campaigns and in recommender systems used by social media platforms to the “high-risk” list.
Under enhanced transparency obligations, LLMs would also have to disclose AI-authorship of content, design the model to prevent it from generating illegal content, and publish summaries of copyrighted data used for training.
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By GlobalDataWith EU regulation having previously faced criticism for stifling technological innovation, MEPs added exemptions to these rules for research activities and AI components provided under open-source licenses.
After the vote, co-rapporteur Brando Benifei said, “It is crucial to build citizens’ trust in the development of AI, to set the European way for dealing with the extraordinary changes that are already happening, as well as to steer the political debate on AI at the global level.
“We are confident our text balances the protection of fundamental rights with the need to provide legal certainty to businesses and stimulate innovation in Europe.”
