EU's AI Act Enters Into Force – What This Means for Businesses

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The AI Act is finally here and big changes are on the way. Here are the key details of the Act and the tips businesses should heed before its full arrival.

The EU's AI Act - its landmark regulation to rein in the growing power of artificial intelligence - has officially entered into force today (1 August), heralding big changes for Big Tech.

The Act has been in development for years, being first discussed in 2021 and altered in recent years with the sudden rise of generative AI technology. The Act has also been put under heavy scrutiny - challenges from member states towards the end of 2023 made it seem like the Act could collapse before coming to fruition.

But after delays, adjustments and multiple landslide votes, the AI Act is finally here. The changes won't be felt immediately - it will be years until all of the rules come into effect - but this will give businesses and member states time to prepare for the Act's full arrival.

Simply put, the AI Act is an attempt to balance managing the risks of this technology while letting the EU benefit from its potential. It has been argued that this is the most robust and detailed form of AI regulation in the world, which could influence legislation in other parts of the world.

The Act is designed to regulate AI technology through a risk-based approach - the riskier an AI application is, the more rules that apply to it. Minimum risk systems such as spam filters and recommender systems do not face any obligations under the AI Act.

Meanwhile, high-risk applications such as AI systems used for recruitment, AI-based loan assessments or autonomous robots will face much stricter requirements, including human oversight, high-quality data sets and cybersecurity. Some systems are banned entirely, such as emotion recognition systems used at the workplace.

The AI Act also introduces rules for general-purpose AI models", which are highly capable AI models that are designed to perform a wide variety of tasks such as generating human-like text - think ChatGPT and similar chatbots.

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