Twenty-four hours after the European Commission published the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice (see EUROPE 13678/17), reactions from the industry remain restrained.
Tech giants, such as Meta and Google, have not yet decided whether or not they will subscribe to the code. According to their statements, they prefer, at this stage, to wait until they have studied its contents in detail before they make a decision. A spokesman for OpenAI announced that the company was in the process of examining the document before it decides whether or not it will subscribe to the code.
CCIA Europe—which represents large, mainly American, digital companies (Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, etc.)—has issued a statement in which it is claimed that the code “still imposes a disproportionate burden on AI providers”.
“Without meaningful improvements, signatories remain at a disadvantage compared to non-signatories”, said Boniface de Champris, senior policy manager at CCIA Europe.
The lobby believes that the code remains “overly prescriptive and disproportionate” and that the copyright section “has worsened” with new measures “outside the [AI] Act’s remit”.
The Business Software Alliance (BSA), which represents the interests of major software manufacturers such as Microsoft and Adobe, appears more open to the code’s “improvements”, particularly with regard to “protections of trade secrets”.
Director of Policy [for EMEA] Hadrien Valembois believes that [the code] shows “additional flexibility in its compliance with the Act, a welcome reference to the EU Copyright Directive and its well-crafted and balanced text and data mining exception, and [...] better alignment with the scope of the AI Act.”
But the trade association does, once again, call for the timetable for implementing the code’s commitments to be adapted—asking the European Commission to “consider options [...] to allow companies [...] to comply with its provisions” (see EUROPE 13673/15). (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)