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EU regulators pass the planet's first sweeping AI regulations

The European Parliament has passed a major piece of legislation to govern AI use in the European Union. After the AI Act becomes law, some applications will be banned, while the likes of OpenAI and Google will have to abide by new rules.

The EU says the regulations seek to "protect fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability from high-risk AI, while boosting innovation and establishing Europe as a leader in the field." "Biometric categorization systems based on sensitive characteristics" will be outlawed, as will the "untargeted scraping" of images of faces from CCTV footage and the web to create facial recognition databases. Although the AI Act by and large bans law enforcement's use of biometric identification systems, it will be allowed in certain circumstances with prior authorization, such as to help find a missing person or prevent a terrorist attack.

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