The EU’s landmark AI Act faces an increasingly bumpy road after an inter-parliamentary agreement to prohibit new amendments collapsed this week, as the EPP moved to insert clauses allowing biometric tracking in circumstances involving criminality.
MEPs will vote on the contentious AI Act on June 14th. The legislation aims to impose a rating system on new AI products based on risk and enshrine anti-discriminatory protocols into law. The world’s first AI rulebook, as well as an attempt by the EU to get ahead of the pack on AI regulation globally, the Act easily breezed through the committee stage last month under the assumption that no major new amendments would be inserted.
Lawmakers are particularly anxious that the new technology could be used to discriminate against EU citizens, with Parliament hearing from human rights groups such as Amnesty International, that are keen to prevent the technology from being used for border security.
This consensus began to crack when the EPP, the Parliament’s largest political faction, proposed fresh changes to allow, with judicial approval, the use of biometric technology in incidents of a serious criminal offence. The EPP claims that they were given the flexibility to propose new amendments to the agreed text. Other factions dispute the existence of such an agreement.
Speaking to The European Conservative, Dutch MEP Jeroen Lenaers defended the EPP’s decision saying that it was perfectly justifiable for new changes to be proposed arguing that authorities should be able to use biometric identification in cases of emergency, such as missing person cases or terrorism.
Lenaers added that there was nothing wrong with including new clauses. The EPP proposals are now likely to clash with a counterproposal of the Left group, which is looking for a total ban on the use of biometric identification technology by authorities.
Throughout the five-year legislative process to regulate AI, the EPP has championed the commercial applications of AI. The EU, by contrast, stands accused of trying to strangle the infant AI industry out of existence with overregulation.
The entire legislative process for regulating AI has been full of headaches for lawmakers with ChatGPT technology throwing a spanner in the works on EU attempts to get ahead of the AI revolution. Brussels hopes to mimic similar successes seen with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and use its regulatory strength to dominate AI development and make up for Europe’s lack of technological innovation.
Despite EU regulations preventing the introduction of certain AI products, Brussels hopes to bury the hatchet with AI innovators. To get a better understanding of the technology, EU officials met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to discuss potential regulator fears amid concerns that AI technology threatens to shatter Europe’s overly cautious business model.
