Sunday, September 8, 2024

EU approves Artificial Intelligence Act: What is it, banned applications, exemptions and more – Times of India

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The lawmakers in the European Union have approved the bloc’s AI regulation which aims to “to protect fundamental rights, democracy, the rule .f law and environmental sustainability from high-risk AI” by prohibiting uses of the technology in certain areas,

The Parliament approved the Artificial Intelligence Act after 523 votes were polled in favour, 46 against and 49 abstentions. The act is also seen to play a role in boosting innovation.

What use cases are banned under AI Act
The new rules ban certain AI applications that threaten citizens’ rights, the bloc said. These include biometric categorisation systems based on sensitive characteristics and untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases.

“Emotion recognition 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,” it added.

Exemptions under AI Act
The use of biometric identification systems (RBI) by law enforcement is prohibited in principle, except in “exhaustively listed and narrowly defined situations”.

It said that “Real-time” RBI can only be deployed if strict safeguards are met. This means that its use is limited in time and geographic scope and subject to specific prior judicial or administrative authorisation. For example, a targeted search of a missing person or preventing a terrorist attack.

Obligations for high-risk systems
The new rules will also foresee the obligations for high-risk AI systems “due to their significant potential harm to health, safety, fundamental rights, environment, democracy and the rule of law.”

The examples of these include use of high-risk AI in critical infrastructure, employment, healthcare, banking, among others.

It is to be noted that the new act makes it mandatory that the general-purpose AI (GPAI) systems as well as models on which they are based must meet transparency requirements, including compliance with EU copyright law and publishing detailed summaries of the content used for training.

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