The first law on Artificial Intelligence (AI) globally. The European Institutions are proud after hours of negotiations.  Innovation will be less proud. AI certainly needs regulation. It remains to be seen if this AI Act does not go a bit too far. 

Compared to the initial Commission proposal, the main new elements of the provisional agreement can be summarised as follows:

• rules on high-impact general-purpose AI models that can cause systemic risk in the future, as well as on high-risk AI systems
• a revised system of governance with some enforcement powers at EU level
• extension of the list of prohibitions but with the possibility to use remote biometric identification by law enforcement authorities in public spaces, subject to safeguards
• foundation models are now included in two risk categories under the AI Act that will require companies to comply with a host of duties when developing, bringing on market and using foundation models or AI that contains such models
• better protection of rights through the obligation for deployers of high-risk AI systems to conduct a fundamental rights impact assessment prior to putting an AI system into use

The text of the AI Act still needs to go through some formal steps and likely will published officially in the next few weeks. The AI Act will then kick in after two years, i.e. Q1 or Q2 2026. Still time to get ready. We will keep you posted.