Europe pioneers in AI regulation with new laws

The European Union’s (EU) landmark rules on artificial intelligence (AI), known as the AI Act, will come into force next month, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The Act, which is more comprehensive than the US’s voluntary compliance approach and China’s state control-focused approach, sets a potential global benchmark for AI technology.

The AI Act was endorsed by EU countries following a political deal reached in December. It imposes strict transparency obligations on high-risk AI systems, while requirements for general-purpose AI models will be lighter.

The Act restricts governments’ use of real-time biometric surveillance in public spaces to specific cases.

The legislation will apply beyond the 27-country bloc and is expected to have global reach. Companies outside the EU using EU customer data in their AI platforms will need to comply.

Bans on the use of AI in social scoring, predictive policing, and untargeted scraping of facial images will take effect six months after the regulation enters into force.

Obligations for general-purpose AI models will apply after 12 months, and rules for AI systems embedded into regulated products in 36 months.

Violations of the Act can result in fines ranging from 7.5 million euros ($8.2 million), or 1.5 per cent of turnover, to 35 million euros, or 7 per cent of global turnover, depending on the type of violation.