On Thursday, Europe’s elected representatives took a new step towards tougher regulation of artificial intelligence and tools like ChatGPT.

The AI ​​law, first unveiled in 2021, will be the world’s first comprehensive technology law, with rules around the use of facial recognition and other artificial intelligence tools. On Thursday, two committees in the EU Parliament agreed on the first draft.

After two years of negotiations, the proposal now moves on to the next step in the process, where elected representatives will finalize the legislation in collaboration with the European Commission and individual member states.

The bill will classify AI tools by level of risk – from low to unacceptable. Authorities and companies that use them will then be subject to different terms, depending on the risk.

The elected representatives also agreed to ban the use of facial recognition in public spaces, ban tools for predictive surveillance, and introduce new transparency measures for generative AI. There are tools that use AI to generate text, images and other content in response to questions, such as ChatGPT.

The bill will be submitted to a plenary vote in the EU Parliament in June, before representatives from parliament, the EU Council and the EU Commission gather to finalize the terms.

If the proposals are eventually adopted, a period of around two years will follow during which affected parties will have time to comply with the new rules. (© NTB)