European Parliament takes steps towards regulation of artificial intelligence

The European Parliament adopted its negotiating position on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act with 499 votes in favour, 28 against and 93 abstentions ahead of talks with EU member states on the final shape of the law. The rules would ensure that AI developed and used in Europe is fully in line with EU rights and values including human oversight, safety, privacy, transparency, non-discrimination and social and environmental wellbeing. The rules follow a risk-based approach and establish obligations for providers and those deploying AI systems depending on the level of risk the AI can generate. AI systems with an unacceptable level of risk to people’s safety would therefore be prohibited, such as those used for social scoring (classifying people based on their social behavior or personal characteristics). Members of the European Parliament (MEP) expanded the list to include bans on intrusive and discriminatory uses of AI, such as:

• “Real-time” remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces;
• “Post” remote biometric identification systems, with the only exception of law enforcement for the prosecution of serious crimes and only after judicial authorization;
• Biometric categorization systems using sensitive characteristics (e.g. gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, religion, political orientation);
• Predictive policing systems (based on profiling, location or past criminal behavior);
• Emotion recognition systems in law enforcement, border management, the workplace, and educational institutions; and
• Un-targeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases (violating human rights and right to privacy).