According to Reuters, the group of seven advanced nations are about to adopt a risk-based AI regulation after their digital ministries agreed on Sunday, as European lawmakers proposed an AI act to enforce rules on emerging tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney etc.

Meanwhile, the G7 ministers, in a joint statement issued at the end of the two-day meeting in Japan, reminded that such regulation should be able to “preserve an open enabling environment” for the development of AI technologies and be based on democratic values.

The agreement sets a milestone for how major countries regulate AI amidst privacy concerns and security risks as the ministers identified that “policy instruments to achieve the common vision and goal of trustworthy AI may vary across G7 members”. Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission Executive Vice President, said, “The conclusions of this G7 meeting show that we are definitely not alone in this”.

After the thriving race of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot, governments have focused more on them as it has become the fastest-growing application since its launch in November. The ministerial statement said, “We plan to convene future G7 discussions on generative AI, which could include topics like governance, how to safeguard intellectual property rights including copyright, promote transparency, address disinformation”, including information manipulation by foreign forces.

Italy, one of the G7 members, recently banned ChatGPT in order to investigate the potential breach of personal data rules. However, on Friday, Italy lifted the ban, which inspired fellow European privacy regulators to launch investigations. In addition, the EU lawmakers on Thursday made an agreement to propose a new draft of its upcoming AI act that includes copyright protection measures for companies that are using generative AI tools to develop their systems.

Vestager, the tech regulation chief of the EU, said the bloc “will have the political agreement this year” on the AI legislation like labelling obligations for AI-generated images or music to address copyright infringement and educational risks.