As recently as February, generative AI did not feature prominently in EU lawmakers' plans for regulating generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as ChatGPT.
The bloc's 108-page proposal for the AI Act, published two
years earlier, included only one mention of the word "chatbot."
References to AI-generated content largely referred to deepfakes: images or
audio designed to impersonate human beings.
By mid-April, however, members of European Parliament (MEPs)
were racing to update those rules to catch up with an explosion of interest in
generative AI, which has provoked awe and anxiety since OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT
six months ago.
That scramble culminated on Thursday with a new draft of the
legislation which identified copyright protection as a core piece of the effort
to keep AI in check.
Interviews with four lawmakers and two other sources close
to discussions reveal for the first time how over just 11 days this small group
of politicians hammered out what could become landmark legislation, reshaping
the regulatory landscape for OpenAI and its competitors.
The draft bill is not final and lawyers say it will likely
take years to come into force.
The speed of their work, though, is also a rare example of
consensus in Brussels, which is often criticised for the slow pace of
decision-making.
Last-minute changes
Since launching in November, ChatGPT has become the fastest
growing app in history, and sparked a flurry of activity from Big Tech
competitors and investment in generative AI
The runaway popularity of such applications led EU industry
chief Thierry Breton and others to call for regulation of ChatGPT-like
services.
An organisation backed by Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of
Tesla and Twitter, took it up a notch by issuing a letter warning of
existential risk from AI and calling for stricter regulations.
On April 17, the dozen MEPs involved in drafting the
legislation signed an open letter agreeing with some parts of Musk's letter and
urged world leaders to hold a summit to find ways to control the development of
advanced AI.
That same day, however, two of them — Dragos Tudorache and
Brando Benifei — proposed changes that would force companies with generative AI
systems to disclose any copyrighted material used to train their models,
according to four sources present at the meetings, who requested anonymity due
to the sensitivity of the discussions.
That tough new proposal received cross-party support, the
sources said.
One proposal by conservative MEP Axel Voss — forcing
companies to request permission from rights holders before using the data — was
rejected as too restrictive and something that could hobble the emerging
industry.
After thrashing out the details over the next week, the EU
outlined proposed laws that could force an uncomfortable level of transparency
on a notoriously secretive industry.
"I must admit that I was positively surprised on how we
converged rather easily on what should be in the text on these models,"
Tudorache told Reuters on Friday.
"It shows there is a strong consensus, and a shared
understanding on how to regulate at this point in time."
The committee will vote on the deal on May 11 and if
successful, it will advance to the next stage of negotiation, the trilogue,
where EU member states will debate the contents with the European Commission
and Parliament.
"We are waiting to see if the deal holds until
then," one source familiar with the matter said.
Big Brother vs the Terminator
Until recently, MEPs were still unconvinced that generative
AI deserved any special consideration.
In February, Tudorache told Reuters that generative AI was
"not going to be covered" in-depth. "That's another discussion I
don't think we are going to deal with in this text," he said.
Citing data security risks over warnings of human-like
intelligence, he said: "I am more afraid of Big Brother than I am of the
Terminator."
But Tudorache and his colleagues now agree on the need for
laws specifically targeting the use of generative AI.
Under new proposals targeting "foundation models,"
companies like OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, would have to disclose any
copyrighted material — books, photographs, videos and more — used to train
their systems.
Claims of copyright infringement have rankled AI firms in
recent months with Getty Images suing Stable Diffusion for using copyrighted
photos to train its systems. OpenAI has also faced criticism for refusing to
share details of the dataset used to train its software.
"There have been calls from outside and inside the
Parliament for a ban or classifying ChatGPT as high-risk," said MEP Svenja
Hahn. "The final compromise is innovation-friendly as it does not classify
these models as 'high risk,' but sets requirements for transparency and
quality." © Reuters
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