A new regulation that aims to protect fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability from high-risk Artificial Intelligence tools, while boosting innovation and establishing Europe as a leader in the field, was voted today by the European Parliament Plenary in Strasbourg.
The regulation, which is considered a landmark for the use of AI in the EU, was endorsed by MEPs with 523 votes in favour, 46 against and 49 abstentions.
The new rules ban AI applications that threaten citizens’ rights, including biometric categorisation systems based on sensitive characteristics and untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases.
The use of biometric identification systems (RBI) by law enforcement is prohibited in principle, except in exhaustively listed and narrowly defined situations, such as in cases of limited in time and geographic scope and subject to specific prior judicial or administrative authorisation.
Emotion reco
gnition in the workplace and schools, social scoring, predictive policing (when it is based solely on profiling a person or assessing their characteristics), and AI that manipulates human behaviour or exploits people’s vulnerabilities will also be forbidden.
An important aspect of the regulation is that it allows citizens to submit complaints about AI systems and receive explanations about decisions based on high-risk AI systems that affect their rights.
Also, general-purpose AI (GPAI) systems, and the GPAI models they are based on, must meet certain transparency requirements, including compliance with EU copyright law and publishing detailed summaries of the content used for training. Additionally, artificial or manipulated images, audio or video content (‘deepfakes’) need to be clearly labelled as such.
In addition to preventive measures, the regulatory sandboxes and real-world testing will have to be established at the national level, and made accessible to SMEs and start-ups, to develop and train innov
ative AI before its placement on the market. An AI Office will be set up to support companies to start complying with the rules before they enter into force.
Source: Cyprus News Agency