The world’s biggest tech companies are trying to persuade the European Union to ease regulations on artificial intelligence to avoid multibillion-dollar fines. Amazon, Google and Meta✴ are seeking to reduce stringent AI transparency requirements and protect their trade secrets.
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In May, the European Parliament passed the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act, the world’s first comprehensive set of rules (AI Act) governing the technology. The passage of the law was preceded by months of intense negotiations between various political groups. However, as Reuters reports, until a code of practice is finalized, it remains unclear how strictly the rules will be applied to general purpose AI (GPAI) systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and how copyright infringement issues will be addressed. right
The EU invited companies and scientists to participate in the development of the code of practice. The code will not be legally binding when it comes into force late next year, but will provide companies with a checklist to demonstrate compliance. Ignoring these feeds could lead to legal consequences for companies claiming to be following the law.
The problem of copyright is also considered. Companies like Stability AI and OpenAI constantly face questions about whether they are violating copyright by using best-selling books or photo archives to train their models without the creators’ permission. The AI Act requires companies to provide “detailed summaries” of the data used to train models. This could allow content creators whose work was used without permission to seek compensation, although this issue remains to be worked out in detail and possibly decided in the courts.
However, there are concerns that the new CV requirements may contain too little data to protect trade secrets, while authors certainly have a right to know whether their content has been used without permission. Maximilian Gahntz, head of AI policy at Mozilla, expressed concern that companies are “trying to avoid transparency.” He noted: “The AI Act represents the best chance to shed light on this important aspect and at least partially clarify something.”
Technology companies are hoping the Act will be changed in their favor. “We insist that these obligations must be manageable and, if possible, tailored to start-ups,” said Maxime Ricard, policy manager at Allied for Startups. Once the rules are published in the first half of next year, tech companies will have until August 2025 to prepare to comply.
Nonprofit organizations such as Access Now, the Future of Life Institute and Mozilla have also applied to participate in the development of the code.