EU's Landmark AI Act Set to Take Effect on August 1, 2024

The EU will start enforcing its new AI regulations on August 1

The EU AI Act has been published in full in the bloc's Official Journal. The European Union has published the full and final text for the EU AI Act in its Official Journal, as reported by TechCrunch. Since the new law will come into force 20 days after its publication, that means it will be enforceable starting on August 1. All its provisions will be fully applicable in two years' time, but some of them will be implemented much earlier than that. Six months from now, the bloc will start implementing bans on prohibited applications for AI, such as the use of social credit ranking systems, the collection and compilation of facial recognition information for databases, as well the use of real time emotion recognition systems in schools and workplaces. In nine months, the EU will start implementing codes of practice on AI developers. The EU AI Office established by the European Commission will work with consultancy firms to draft those codes. It also plans to work with companies that provide general-purpose models deemed to carry systemic risks. As TechCrunch notes, though, that raises concerns that the industry's biggest players will be able to shape the rules that are supposed to keep them in check. After a year, makers of general purpose AI models, such as ChatGPT, will have to comply with new transparency requirements and have to be able to demonstrate that their systems are safe and easily explainable to users. In addition to all those, the EU AI Act includes rules that apply to generative AI and manipulated media, such as making sure deepfakes and other AI-generated images, videos and audio are clearly labeled. Companies training their AI models will have to respect copyright laws, as well, unless their model is created purely for research and development. "Rightsholders may choose to reserve their rights over their works or other subject matter to prevent text and data mining, unless this is done for the purposes of scientific research," the AI Act's text reads. "Where the rights to opt out has been expressly reserved in an appropriate manner, providers of general-purpose AI models need to obtain an authorization from rightsholders if they want to carry out text and data mining over such works."

The compliance countdown has started for AI companies operating in the EU

Now that the full text has been published, it officially starts the clock for compliance deadlines that companies must meet. The AI Act will come into law in 20 days, on August 1st, and future deadlines will be tied to that date. The new law prohibits certain uses for AI, and those bans are part of the first deadline. The AI Act bans application uses "that threaten citizens' rights," like biometric categorization to deduce information like sexual orientation or religion, or the untargeted scraping of faces from the internet or security camera footage. Systems that try to read emotions are banned in the workplace and schools, as are social scoring systems. The use of predictive policing tools is also banned in some instances. These uses are considered to have an "unacceptable risk," and tech companies will have until February 2nd, 2025, to comply.