EU AI Act: regulating artificial intelligence and the impact on businesses

June 21, 2023

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Reading Time 1.5 minutes

By Guido Sombroek

The EU has adopted the AI Act, the world's first comprehensive legislation for Artificial Intelligence (AI). These regulations aim to protect businesses and promote the development and use of AI technology. Find out how these regulations can protect you and explore the possible solutions offered.

The EU's AI Act will have a profound impact on companies and organizations in various sectors. Prioritizing safety, transparency, traceability, non-discrimination and environmental friendliness, the legislation seeks the welfare of users and society. It emphasizes the importance of human oversight of automated systems to prevent harmful effects. In addition, the Act seeks a technology-neutral, uniform definition of AI that can be applied to future AI systems, ensuring clarity and consistency in implementation.

In addition, the AI Act introduces differentiated rules based on the risk level of AI systems. AI systems with unacceptable risk, such as systems that manipulate vulnerable groups or socially score, will be banned. High-risk AI systems that may harm safety or fundamental rights will be subject to strict rules, including mandatory pre-market assessments and ongoing monitoring throughout their life cycle. Limited-risk AI systems must meet minimum transparency requirements so that users can make informed decisions when interacting with AI applications.

To comply with the AI Act, companies and organizations must carefully assess their AI systems and ensure that they meet the required standards.

• For AI systems with unacceptable risk: Prohibited AI systems that pose a threat to humans, such as voice-controlled toys that encourage dangerous behavior in children, as well as social scoring systems, such as classification of people based on behavior, socioeconomic status or personal characteristics
• For high-risk AI systems: These systems are divided into two categories: (1) AI systems used in products covered by EU product safety regulations, such as toys, aviation, automobiles and (2) AI systems covered by eight specific areas, which must be registered in an EU database. These areas include biometric identification and categorization of natural persons, management and operation of critical infrastructure, education and vocational training, employment, human resource management and access to self-employment, access to and use of essential private and public services and benefits, law enforcement, migration, asylum and border management, and support in legal interpretation and application of the law.

source: Artificial Intelligence Act