EU Passes First AI Regulation Law: How it Works and Why it Matters?

The European Union became the first government institution to pass a monumental law regulating the use and distribution of AI amid growing

The European Parliament on Wednesday approved the proposed EU AI Law to prevent the technology from being used in an "unacceptable" manner and enforce restrictions on "high-risk" dangers it poses.

European Parliament president Roberta Metsola endorsed the law as a means for "leadership, innovation, and new avenues" as more tech firms are ramping up the development of their own AI models.

The passing of the law marks the continent's monumental step to address emerging issues from the spread of AI while other countries, including the US, is still struggling to pass its own regulations.

EU AI Law: How it Works?

Touted by its authors as a law to make AI more "human-centric," the law will take a "risk-based approach" in governing how the technology can be used by companies, institutions, and the public.

This means the more high-risk application of AI is deemed, the more scrutiny and attention it will have with regulators.

With the passing of the law, it has effectively banned the use of automated profiling, other social scoring systems, and biometrics scanning that predict people's race, gender, sexual orientation, and threat level.

AI-generated content will also be required to be clearly labeled to prevent further spread of misinformation online. These include deepfakes and even chatbot results.

As for the AI firms themselves, the bloc will start requiring companies to provide detailed summaries of where they sourced their data sets to train their AI models.

AI firms, such as OpenAI, usually use web crawlers to collect available content on the internet for their AI trainings, often violating paywalls and licensed copyrights in the process.

EU AI Law: Why it Matters?

With the rise of AI technology, dangers posed by it have also been noted to increase.

Lawmakers and digital watchdogs have also alerted the public of AI hallucinations, a factor that can further amplify misinformation and prejudice online, especially with the upcoming election period in the bloc.

There is also the fact that technology is becoming more common among cybercriminals and their operations, a trend that has hit Europe severely over the past year.

EU lawmakers stated that the passing of the AI Act will help give other nations the head start to push for the passing of their respective AI regulation laws.