The European Parliament (EP) is working on a proposal for a Regulation on Artificial Intelligence (the AI Act).

On 11 May, the Internal Market Committee and the Civil Liberties Committee adopted a draft negotiating mandate on the rules for AI. The draft contains important amendments to the AI Act.

The amendments concern, for example, the list of prohibited uses of AI. The amended list of intrusive and discriminatory uses of AI systems includes:

• real-time remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces
• post remote biometric identification systems, with the exception that such systems may only be used by law enforcement authorities for the prosecution of serious crimes, only following court’s authorisation
• emotion recognition systems in law enforcement, border management, workplace, and educational institutions, and
• predictive policing systems (crime prevention) based on profiling, locations or past criminal behaviour.

Prohibited uses are also to include collection of biometric data from social media or CCTV records to create face recognition databases. MEPs considered such practices as violating human rights and the right to privacy. Using systems for biometric categorisation of human individuals according to sensitive characteristics, e.g. sex, race, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion, political opinion, will not be permitted either.

The development of AI in Europe should be ethically responsible and human-centric. AI systems with an unacceptable level of risk for the safety of people, including systems that use subliminal, deliberately manipulative techniques, or those used for social scoring (classifying people based on their personal characteristics, socio-economic status, social behaviour), are to be prohibited.

The Commission’s position will be put to the vote at the EP’s plenary sitting (scheduled for 12–15 June), followed by negotiations between the Commission, the EP and the Council to finalise the wording of the AI Act.

More details can be found here:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/pl/press-room/20230505IPR84904/ai-act-a-step-closer-to-the-first-rules-on-artificial-intelligence