On Wednesday 9 April, the Commission unveiled its plan to put the EU back in the global artificial intelligence race, entitled the ‘AI Continent Action Plan’.
The final document deviates very little from the one publicised in our previous article on Monday 7 April (see EUROPE 13616/8). The five main pillars outlined in the Communication, on which the Commission intends to base its vision, remain unchanged: development of infrastructures and access to data, application of artificial intelligence (AI) in strategic sectors, recruitment of experts and simplification of the legislative framework.
The Commission is therefore planning to invest €20 billion in its ‘AI Factories’ and ‘Gigafactories’, notably through the ‘InvestAI’ programme presented last February at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris (see EUROPE 13577/14).
It plans to triple the capacity of European data centres by 2035 and to launch a ‘Data Union Strategy’ and a ‘Cloud and AI Development Act’.
The Commission also wants to encourage the application of AI in sectors that it considers essential (aerospace and defence, agriculture, energy, mobility and automotive, etc.) and aims to simplify regulations “to facilitate a smooth (...) application of the AI Act”.
The timetable is now a little more detailed. At the same time as publishing the plan, the Commission launched, on Wednesday 9 April, two public consultations on the AI Apply Strategy and on the Cloud and AI Development Act. The Data Union Strategy consultation will open in May.
On the same day, the Commission launched a preliminary call for expression of interest in establishing ‘Gigafactories’. While the technical specifications of these next generation factories have yet to be defined, their financing will have to be organised with the private sector. The Commission is currently working with the European Investment Bank to launch the ‘InvestAI’ fund.
According to a senior Commission official, with regard to the call for interest for the ‘Gigafactories’, the lead coordinator “must be based in the EU or controlled by the EU” to protect European interests as far as possible.
The simplification of the European legislative framework is a major theme of this mandate, and it also affects digital regulations. Henna Virkkunen said that the Commission wanted to see if there was an “additional administrative burden” for companies that she could remove and added that it would not “harm anyone if we removed certain reporting obligations”, particularly in relation to the application of AI.
The possibility of “streamlining existing data legislation” was also raised, in order to, according to the Commission, of “reduce complexity and administrative burden and to ensure that data governance structures are efficient and effective”.
An omnibus simplification package in the digital field is planned by the Commission for the end of the year.
See the Commission’s IA Plan: https://aeur.eu/f/gcz (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)