Members of European Parliament (MEPs) have approved their negotiating position on what’s been dubbed the
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act. This proposed set of regulations will determine how AI applications will be classified and what sort of activity would no longer be considered permissible.
According to the official press release regarding the matter, the new regulations are intended to help ensure the future of AI proceeds in accordance with EU rights. Areas of concern include safety, transparency, privacy and human oversight. The MEPs also aim to address social, environmental and discriminatory affairs with the new regulation.
MEPs provided a clear list of AI use cases that would be outright banned, including creating facial recognition databases by scraping images from CCTV footage or sources online. They also confirmed that biometric categorization systems using factors like gender and race would be prohibited. Other areas, like using AI to influence election outcomes, wouldn’t be banned but considered high risk. A complete list of the proposed categorizations is available in the press release.
