Unsurprisingly, negotiators from the Council of the EU and the European Parliament do not appear to have had too much difficulty in reaching agreement on the technical parts of the revised text of the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) (see EUROPE 13831/10). In a ‘four-column’ negotiating document dated 15 April, which Agence Europe was able to consult, a number of points of agreement have already been reached, but mainly on technical details.
The two co-legislators have very similar versions on AI literacy, and have reintroduced the obligation to register AI systems that are not considered high-risk, and the notion of “strict necessity” in “exceptional cases” for the processing of personal data by certain models.
They have also agreed to maintain fixed dates for the entry into force of the obligations: 2 December 2027 for Annex III systems and 2 August 2028 for Annex I systems (see EUROPE 13828/2).
However, the European Parliament and the EU Council still need to fine-tune the details of the strengthening of the AI Office’s powers of control and action, as well as the establishment of regulatory sandboxes and “real world” testing systems for high-risk AI systems.
The deadline by which the digital marking of audio, image, video or text content created by AI must become compulsory is also under discussion. The European Parliament wanted to reduce the deadline from February 2027 to November 2026.
The issue of banning ‘nudifiers’, AI systems capable of manipulating images to represent real people in sexually explicit contexts and without their consent (see EUROPE 13825/5), is less political but more legally sensitive. The wording of the related article is still under discussion.
Other, more delicate, points still need to be discussed. The amendment to the annexes proposed by the European Parliament, in particular sections A and B of Annex I, so that sectoral legislation takes precedence over the AI Act, is a source of considerable dissension (see EUROPE 13844/9).
The next negotiating session, scheduled for 28 April, aims to be conclusive. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)