Historic debate airs in the European Parliament for the last step before the EU approves next year the first major legislation designed to regulate artificial intelligence. It has been an arduous debate for months, with many agreeing on the need to set the lines in the use of such a powerful technology, but also with some ideological disagreements on aspects such as the use of facial recognition in public spaces. If the proposal is approved today in the chamber, the European Council - made up of governments -, the Commission and Parliament, must agree on a common text for the new AI law.
Although there is a widespread conviction in the Parliament that artificial intelligence needs regulation as immediately as possible, the final wording of the regulation will be a difficult task. The ban on facial recognition in public areas will be one of the biggest stumbling blocks. Several members of the European People's Party intervened yesterday to ask for at least two exceptions to the rule that the police cannot use it in their investigations.
The popular ones propose – and will insist in the negotiation of the text that will begin if the proposal is approved today – that there must be caveats for the prohibition of facial recognition through AI. Two of those proposed by some deputies was that the police can use AI identification in cases of terrorism and in cases of the disappearance of children. EU interior ministers have previously expressed concern that the proposed law may overly restrict the use of this technology by security forces.
The proposal of the European Parliament contemplates that facial identification be prohibited in public spaces in real time and also in recordings, although with the exception of judicial investigations for serious crimes. It is the most controversial point, but it is not the only one.
While the progressive forces demanded a veto on the use of AI for biometric identification and warned that this is how it is used in China and Russia, the conservatives appealed to the democratic nature of the European proposal and hope to introduce the exception in the law that Allow police to use technology in certain cases.
The executive vice president of the Commission, Margrethe Vestager, urged the deputies to approve this rule today and expressed her conviction that "a balance" will be found between the veto on the recognition of people in public spaces and the prosecution of crimes.
AI biometric identification can also be applied to other aspects, as some deputies recalled yesterday who called for an exhaustive definition of everything that should be vetoed. One of the differential characteristics of the European Parliament's proposal is that the regulations establish obligations for AI service providers according to the degree of risk they pose.
In this evaluation, the European standard proposes to consider an "unacceptable risk" those that involve the "cognitive manipulation of the behavior of specific vulnerable people or groups", such as toys that encourage dangerous behavior in children; social score, a “ranking of people based on their behavior, socioeconomic status, or personal characteristics”; and the controversial biometric identification.
“High risk” AI systems will also be considered those that affect security and fundamental rights. All products that use it must be in a database of the European Union.
On generative AI, such as ChatGPT, Midjourney or Anthropic, Parliament proposes that it meet transparency requirements such as revealing that the content has been generated by using this technology, preventing it from generating illegal content and publishing summaries of the data protected by copyright used to train the system.
Finally, in the grading of risks, the Parliament considers that of certain AI systems that must meet transparency requirements so that users can make informed decisions as “limited”. The proposal is that people are aware of when they are interacting with such a system. After today's vote, the text could be ready by the end of this year.
