Why the EU AI Act was so hard to agree on

First, Melissa tells me, there is a lot of disagreement about foundation models, which has taken up most of the energy and space during the latest debates. There are several definitions of the term "foundation model" floating around, which is part of what's causing the discord, but the core concept has to do with general-purpose AI that can do many different things for various applications. You've probably played around with ChatGPT; that interface is essentially powered by a foundation model, in this case a large language model from OpenAI. Making this more complex, though, is that these technologies can also be plugged into various other applications with more narrow uses, like education or advertising. Initial versions of the EU AI Act didn't explicitly consider foundation models, but Melissa notes that the proliferation of generative AI products over the past year pushed lawmakers to integrate them into the risk framework. In the version of the legislation passed by Parliament in June, all foundation models would be tightly regulated regardless of their assigned risk category or how they are used. This was deemed necessary in light of the vast amount of training data required to build them, as well as IP and privacy concerns and the overall impact they have on other technologies. But of course, tech companies that build foundation models have disputed this and advocate for a more nuanced approach that considers how the models are used. France, Germany, and Italy have flipped their positions and gone so far to say that foundation models should be largely exempt from AI Act regulations.