The European Parliament has approved by a large majority its final position on the Artificial Intelligence Law, and opens the door for negotiations to begin with the European Commission and the Council of the EU to agree on the final text of the law. These talks will continue under the rotating presidency that Spain He will take office on July 1.

Among the demands of the European Parliament is that of prohibit real-time biometric surveillance in public spaces, contrary to what the Community Executive and the EU countries have defended, which are committed to allowing it if authorized by a judge, in very specific cases.

GPT-chat

In full debate on the need to regulate the systems that are capable of generating text and audiovisual material, Parliament wants its developers to demonstrate that they have reduced the risks that technology can generate to health, fundamental rights and the democratic system.

MEPs also want users who use this technology to generate false images (‘deep fakes’) specify that the content has been tampered with through artificial intelligence.

They also ask that the developers of these systems explain in a “sufficiently detailed” way what copyright-protected data they have used to train artificial intelligence.

biometric identification

The European Parliament has opposed the use of real-time biometric identification systems in public spaces. MEPs, however, do open the door to being able to use them a posteriori, always with judicial authorization, to prosecute “serious crimes”.

The European Parliament has thus rejected the amendment of the European People’s Party, more lax with the protection of fundamental rights.

The PPE has been in favor of being able to use these systems, with the permission of a judge, to search for missing persons (including minors), to prevent a terrorist attack and to locate those who have committed a crime that carries at least three years from prison. “If there is a terrorist attack on the street right now or if the police have received a notice that a child has been lost, images can already be obtained from surveillance cameras, in accordance with current laws and with judicial authorization, biometric identification can be used”, recalled one of the law’s rapporteurs, the Liberal MEP Dragos Tudorache.

What is considered high risk?

The regulation classifies as high risk a whole series of artificial intelligence systems with very specific uses that can only be introduced to the market if they respect the fundamental rights and values ​​of the EU.

For example, those that can be used to influence the outcome of an election, those used by financial institutions to assess the solvency and establish a person’s credit rating or those used by the border control police to control, monitor or process data to predict migratory movements.

After a vote that the Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager, has described as “historic” as it is a pioneer standard in the worldnegotiations will begin between the three European institutions to agree on the final text of the law.