Lawmakers in the European Union parliament have passed the world’s first legislation to regulate artificial intelligence as the planet grapples with how the technology is disrupting every industry.
“I welcome the European Parliament’s extraordinary support for our #AIAct, the world’s first global and binding act rules for trustworthy artificial intelligence,” said Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, in a send on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Europe is now a global reference point in the field of artificial intelligence. We are regulating as little as possible, but as much as necessary!”
“I welcome @Europarl_EN’s vote on the AI Act”, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission he wrote on X.
“This will benefit Europe’s fantastic talent pool,” he added. “And establish a model for trustworthy artificial intelligence around the world.”
Five hundred and twenty-three lawmakers voted in favor of the AI Act, while 46 were against it and 49 did not vote, CNBC reported.
A preliminary agreement was reached between the European Parliament and member countries in December.
Last month, two groups of lawmakers in the European Parliament provisionally approved an agreement on AI rules.
Challenges of artificial intelligence
The legislation comes as companies grapple with sensitive issues related to artificial intelligence. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is working to fix its Gemini AI tool after some text and image responses generated by the model were deemed “biased” and “completely unacceptable.”
The company also said this week that it will limit Gemini election requests, with changes already implemented in the United States and India.
A Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) an employee working on AI said earlier this month that the company’s Copilot Designer image generator was creating violent and sexual images.
In response, Microsoft began blocking certain Copilot keywords in an attempt to distance the images. However, Windows Central, a Microsoft-focused website, said the tool can still be tricked into creating violent and sexual images.
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