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AI regulation comes into force in the EU

A pioneering and necessary law in the regulation of artificial intelligence

On August 1st, the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act comes into effect, an ambitious regulation that governs AI systems with significant potential risks. This pioneering initiative positions the EU as a leader in AI regulation, following the precedent set by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has become a global benchmark.

"The EU wants to set the global standard for AI regulation, focusing only on systems that could present significant risks and avoiding over-regulating other AI solutions," says Miquel Peguera, Professor of Law and Political Science at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

The law imposes financial penalties on those who violate the regulation, applying also to providers outside the EU if their AI systems are used within European territory. This includes systems such as GPT-4 (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), and LLaMA (Meta), among others.

Key aspects of the regulation

• It regulates the commercialization and use of AI systems within the EU.

• It promotes the adoption and development of AI while mitigating the risks that its misuse could pose to health, safety, and fundamental rights.

• It bans practices considered to pose unacceptable risks, such as the creation of facial recognition databases through indiscriminate scraping of images from the internet, the evaluation or classification of individuals based on their social behavior or personal characteristics, and the exploitation of vulnerabilities to cause harm.

• It focuses regulation on high-risk AI systems, such as those related to access to essential services and the biometric categorization of individuals.

• It requires transparency in content created or manipulated using AI tools and in emotion recognition systems.

"This regulation primarily affects companies that develop and market AI systems, as well as those using AI tools for activities that are not purely personal," explains Peguera. Any company or professional implementing AI solutions with a certain level of risk must ensure compliance with this regulation. "The regulation also impacts states in their use of AI for public services, border control, crime prosecution, and other fields," the expert concludes.