Author: Sevgi Ünsal Özden
Introduction
The first “Artificial Intelligence Act” of all time, which includes rules and regulations that directly affect tools such as ChatGPT, Bard and Midjourney adopted by the European Parliament with a majority of votes. Thus, the European Parliament has officially taken the steps of a regulation that could be a turning point for artificial intelligence applications that have been on the agenda recently. Following this stage, the trilateral negotiations between the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and the European Parliament will continue and expected to be finalized towards the end of 2023. Therefore, the legislation is expected to enter into force in 2024.
In this article, the important provisions of the act, which is called the first artificial intelligence regulation in this world, will be examined and the reflection of the stipulated rules and regulations on companies will be discussed.
Scope of Artificial Intelligence Act
According to a statement on the European Parliament's website, driven by a desire to establish a uniform definition that can be applied to future artificial intelligence systems, the Parliament's priority is to ensure that artificial intelligence systems used in the European Union (“EU”) are safe, transparent, traceable and protect fundamental rights and freedoms. Furthermore, the Parliament aims to stimulate AI investments and innovation, improve governance and enforcement, and promote a single EU market for AI. Accordingly, in its text, the Parliament adopted a risk-based approach, preferring to ban AI applications that pose an unacceptable risk and setting strict rules for high-risk use cases.
The act will apply to providers who place artificial intelligence systems on the market or make them available in the Union, regardless of whether they are established in the EU, distributors of artificial intelligence systems established in the Union, importers and distributors of artificial intelligence systems and manufacturers, if certain criteria are met. The scope of the act is broadened and it is regulated that if an output produced by AI systems is used within the EU, AI system providers located outside the EU (e.g. in Türkiye) will also be subject to the legislation. Thus, the act will have a global impact affecting many stakeholders around the world.
