The European Parliament has approved the world's first comprehensive framework for constraining the risks of artificial intelligence (AI). The parliament approved the AI act after 523 votes were polled in favour, 46 against and 49 abstentions.

The AI Act works by classifying products according to risk and adjusting scrutiny accordingly. According to the creator, the act would make the tech more "human-centric".

According to MEP Dragos Tudorache, The AI Act is not the end of the journey but the starting point for new governance built around technology.

The act places the EU at the forefront of global attempts to address the dangers associated with AI. According to a BBC report, Enza Iannopollo, principal analyst at Forrester, stated that the adoption of the AI Act marks the beginning of a new AI era, and its importance cannot be overstated. She believes the EU AI Act is the world's first and only set of binding requirements to mitigate AI risks.

The primary idea of the law is to regulate AI based on its capacity to cause harm to society. The higher the risk, the stricter the roles. As per the act, AI systems are considered high-risk and must comply with strict requirements. High-risk systems include those used in critical infrastructure, education, healthcare, law enforcement, border management, and elections.

The act also creates provisions to tackle risks presented by the systems underpinning generative AI tools and chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. These would require producers of general-purpose AI systems that can be harnessed for a range of tasks to be transparent about the material used to train their models and to comply with EU copyright law.

Source: The BBC