EU AI Act should 'exclude general purpose artificial intelligence' - industry groups

Ten European software industry associations have called on the EU to scrap plans to include the regulation of general-purpose AI including natural language processing and chatbots in its new AI Act, describing it as a "fundamental departure from its original objective" and saying that it could stifle innovation and hit the open source community. The European Union AI Act aims to establish a framework to regulate the use of artificial intelligence, taking a "risk-based" approach to its use and establish a worldwide standard. The Act includes core provisions including tighter regulations in high-risk areas such as healthcare and transparency requirements, focusing on specific-purpose narrow AI. However, the group of industry associations, led by BSA, the software alliance, has published a joint statement urging EU institutions to reject recent additions to the Act that include regulation of general purpose AI and instead "maintain a risk-based approach". The objective of general purpose AI is to create machines that can reason and think like a human.