Europe set to abandon AI regulations

Regulation surrounding artificial intelligence, or AI, has been included on a list of 37 legislative acts that the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, is to withdraw in the coming year.

The legislation in question is the AI liability directive, which came about as a result of a European Commission white paper on AI published in February 2020, looking at risks associated with the new field of technology.

The commission said in 2022 that the liability directive was a legal framework that sought to "address the risks generated by specific uses of AI through a set of rules focusing on the respect of fundamental rights and safety". The commission said it wanted to ensure that persons harmed by AI "enjoy the same level of protection as persons harmed by other technologies".

A German-based legal website Noerr summed up the aim of the directive as being "to introduce harmonized rules on the non-contractual liability for damage caused by AI".

But following this week's AI Action Summit in Paris, which saw the unveiling of a major Europe-wide AI investment program and criticism of the regulations, most vocally from United States Vice-President JD Vance, it has been announced that the rules will be dropped, because there is "'no foreseeable agreement" on them. Instead, inquiries will be made "to assess whether another proposal will be tabled or another type of approach should be chosen".

Commissioner Maros Sefcovic, who announced the plan to scrap the regulations, defended it, saying: "We have been looking at how the file has been progressing. We have seen that these proposals are stuck sometimes for many years. We have serious doubt it would make progress this year."

Axel Voss, the European Parliament's leading representative with responsibility for the steering of new AI liability rules, told the Euronews website that the withdrawal was a "strategic mistake" that would lead to "legal uncertainty, corporate power imbalances, and a Wild West approach to AI liability that benefits only Big Tech".

"The reality now is that AI liability will be dictated by a fragmented patchwork of 27 different national legal systems," he said.