The Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the EU continued its work on the legal aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of the proposal for a Regulation establishing harmonised rules on AI (see EUROPE 12703/3), with a view to a future meeting with the Coordinating Committee in the area of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters (CATS).
EU Justice Ministers had expressed support for the initiative at an earlier meeting, but insisted that some aspects needed to be further developed (see EUROPE 12764/7).
First of all, the EU Council Presidency insists on the need to define - and this is a point that is also being debated in the European Parliament (see EUROPE 12752/7) - which uses are to be considered ‘high risk’.
For the time being, the definition of ‘high risk’ use in the Commission’s proposal is based on an AI system “intended to assist a judicial authority in researching and interpreting facts and the law and in applying the law to a concrete set of facts”. On this point, the EU Council suggests, in a document of which EUROPE has obtained a copy, that thresholds be put in place. These would establish the level of involvement of AI in a procedure so as to clarify whether a use falls - or not - under the definition.
In addition to the difficulty of assessing the practical degree of assistance provided by AI, the EU Council Presidency also recalls that the use of this technology remains largely marginal in the judicial sector.
As a result, the text explains, the limited number of AI use cases makes it even more difficult to obtain a detailed and precise analysis.
“In any case, the above-mentioned parts of the text seem to be rather new in the field of justice, which means that it is important to reflect on these concepts”, summarises the Slovenian Presidency.
In fact, several Ministers of Justice expressed their concerns about differentiated use at an informal meeting on 16 July.
The document also stresses the need to examine whether the prison sector is “sufficiently taken into account”. Some decisions relating to the enforcement of sentences are not taken by the judicial authorities and may therefore not fall within the scope of the text.
See the document: https://bit.ly/3AF9RBH (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)