EU Lawmakers Approve Key Parts in AI Act

JAKARTA - European Union legislators agreed on key parts of new rules on artificial intelligence in a meeting on Tuesday evening, October 24, bringing it closer to broader agreement on the historic AI Act. This was revealed according to five sources familiar with the matter.

After two years of negotiations, the bill was approved by the European Parliament last May. Now, the draft AI rules need to be agreed through meetings between parliament and EU member states to draw up the final version of the law in a process known as a trilogue.

At a Tuesday meeting that lasted until midnight, legislators agreed on most parts of Article 6 of the draft AI Act, one of the hurdles in the negotiations, said the sources, who declined to provide further details about what was agreed. They declined to be identified because the discussions were confidential.

According to the source, Article 6 outlines the types of artificial intelligence systems that will be designated as “high risk,” and will therefore be subject to stricter regulatory scrutiny.

The debate over high-risk applications has recently focused on whether to make exceptions for some high-risk AI models, such as those performing "purely additive" tasks, the sources said.

AI systems can be considered purely additive when they are used to perform relatively minor tasks, which are secondary compared to human decisions, such as organizing documents or translating text from one language to another.

Before Tuesday's meeting, Reuters reported citing sources that European legislators had not agreed on several issues, so any agreement was delayed until December.

Dragos Tudorache and Brando Benifei, members of the European Parliament and co-rapporteurs of the EU AI Act, said on Wednesday they were confident a deal could be reached at the fifth trilogue to be held in early December.

"We have made significant progress," said Benifei, quoted by VOI from Reuters. "If the council shows a constructive approach, we could approve it (at the trilogue level) by the end of the year," he said.

Failure to reach a deal could push negotiations into early next year, and raise the risk that further talks will be disrupted by European parliament elections in June.