European Union officials have voted in favor of stricter regulations on artificial intelligence, including a ban on the use of artificial intelligence in biometric tracking. Along with this, all AI systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT will be required to disclose when content has been created by AI.
On Wednesday, European Union officials voted to implement stricter regulations on artificial intelligence, according to Reuters. The draft law "AI Act” includes a ban on using AI for biometric surveillance and requires systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT to disclose when content has been generated by AI.
While the draft is still non-binding, it gives an indication of how EU regulators are thinking about artificial intelligence. New changes to the European Commission's proposed law – which have not yet been finalized – aim to protect EU citizens from potential threats linked to technology machine learning.
The new draft AI law includes a provision that would ban companies from collecting and using biometric data (such as user photos) from social media for facial recognition training purposes.
Companies such as Clearview AI that use this practice to build facial recognition systems drew strong criticism from privacy advocates in 2020.
However, Reuters he says that this regulation may be a source of contention with some EU countries wanting a blanket ban on AI in biometric tracking.
The new EU draft also imposes transparency measures on artificial intelligence. Image compositing services like Midjourney should disclose that content was created by artificial intelligence so we can identify fake images. The bill also requires AI companies to provide summaries of copyrighted material used to train each system.
In addition, developers of artificial intelligence systems should ensure the prevention of the creation of illegal content, and those companies working on "high-risk applications" should assess their potential impact on fundamental human rights and the environment.
The EU's current draft identifies critical AI systems as capable of influencing voters and elections. It also classifies the systems used by social media platforms with more than 45 million users in the same category, thus including platforms such as Meta and Twitter.
Experts say that after much discussion of the new regulations among EU member states, the final version of the law is expected later this year.
