Analysis Passing AI Act marks beginning rather than end of efforts to legislate for artificial intelligence
There may be plenty of times when the EU comes in for criticism but this counts as a major victory for the bloc. In passing what amounts to the world’s first comprehensive legislation on AI, it has established a blueprint that will likely be used by other jurisdictions as they wrestle with how to safeguard citizens while also trying not to get in the way of innovation.
Under the Act, activities such as government-run social scoring, where AI is used to rank citizens based on their behaviour and trustworthiness are banned. Among the other actions that will not be allowed under the new rules are biometric surveillance, emotion recognition, predictive policing and untargeted scraping of facial images.
Business Europe, the lobby group, welcomed the passing of the Act, with Markus J. Beyreris, its director general, describing it as a “pivotal moment for AI development in Europe”.