Europe votes on Artificial Intelligence: Clune welcomes first ever rules governing AI

Following almost two years of negotiation, the European Parliament has overwhelmingly voted in favour of the world’s first ever proposal on harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (AI).

Lead lawmaker for the drafting of the EU’s AI Act, Irish MEP Deirdre Clune has welcomed the political agreement, saying:

“This is perhaps one of, if not the most significant pieces of legislation to come from the European Parliament in the past 5 years. AI will fundamentally alter how we all live our lives.

“The technology is forcefully influencing global security, reshaping international power dynamics and revolutionising the world of work.

“I have always said that the bedrock for regulating AI must be a risk-based approach. Future development of the technology needs to be human centric and responsible.

“We cannot allow AI to grow in an unrestricted and unfettered manner. This is why the EU is actively implementing safeguards and establishing boundaries.

“The objective of the AI Act is simple, to protect users from possible risks, promote innovation and encourage the uptake of safe, trustworthy AI in the EU.

“This will mean that companies developing large language models and generative AI will have to follow new transparency rules in Europe if they wish to continue operating in the 27 Member States.

“Chatbots and AI software which have the ability to create manipulated narratives and images such as ‘deepfakes’ will have to clearly show that their content is AI generated.

“The indiscriminate scraping of images from the internet to create a facial recognition database will be banned.

“Companies will be accountable for the AI they develop.

“It is now crucial for European leaders to take a far more active role in promoting the positive productive possibilities for AI, particularly in the areas of education, healthcare and tackling climate change”, MEP Clune concluded.