The European Council adopted a common position (‘general approach’) on the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act).
Its aim is to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) systems placed on the EU market and used in the Union are safe and respect existing fundamental rights and values of the Union.
The draft regulation presented by the Commission in April 2021 is an essential element of EU policy to foster the development and use across the single market of secure and legal AI that respects fundamental rights.
The proposal follows a risk-based approach and establishes a single horizontal legal framework for AI aimed at ensuring legal certainty. It promotes investment and innovation in AI, improves governance and effective enforcement of existing fundamental rights and security law, and facilitates the development of a single market for AI applications. It goes hand in hand with other initiatives, including a coordinated AI plan aimed at accelerating Investment in AI in Europe.
When it comes to prohibited practices of artificial intelligence, the text extends to private actors the ban on the use of artificial intelligence for social scoring (“social scoring”– risk profiles of individuals based on the monitoring of their behaviour, such as criminal or financial activities – and then punish low-grade citizens by denying them access to basic public services).
Furthermore, a provision prohibiting the use of artificial intelligence systems exploiting the vulnerabilities of a particular group of people now also covers people who are vulnerable due to their social or economic situation.
As regards the prohibition of the use of real-time remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces by law enforcement authorities, the text clarifies the objectives where such use is strictly necessary for law enforcement purposes and for which law enforcement authorities should therefore exceptionally be allowed to use such systems.
The AI Act is still in the draft stage, more information will be available when it is adopted at EU level.
