The EU's AI Act seeks to counter the risks associated with the rapidly growing AI sector
The European Parliament has approved the world's first comprehensive framework for constraining the risks of artificial intelligence.
The AI Act works by classifying products according to risk and adjusting scrutiny accordingly.
"The adoption of the AI Act marks the beginning of a new AI era and its importance cannot be overstated," said Enza Iannopollo, principal analyst at Forrester.
"The EU AI Act is the world's first and only set of binding requirements to mitigate AI risks," she added.
In November 2023, the UK hosted an AI safety summit but is not planning legislation along the lines of the AI Act.
The main idea of the law is to regulate AI based on its capacity to cause harm to society.
AI systems considered "High-risk", such as those used in critical infrastructure, education, healthcare, law enforcement, border management or elections, will have to comply with strict requirements.
The Act also creates provisions to tackle risks posed by the systems underpinning generative AI tools and chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT.These would require producers of some so-called general-purpose AI systems, that can be harnessed for a range of tasks, to be transparent about the material used to train their models and to comply with EU copyright law.
The Act still has to pass several more steps before it formally becomes law.
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