The EU has taken a major step towards passing one of the world's first laws governing artificial intelligence after its main legislative branch approved the text of draft legislation that includes a blanket ban on police use of live facial recognition technology in public places. The European parliament approved rules aimed at setting a global standard for the technology, which encompasses everything from automated medical diagnoses to some types of drone, AI-generated videos known as deepfakes, and bots such as ChatGPT. MEPs will now thrash out details with EU countries before the draft rules – known as the AI act – become legislation. "AI raises a lot of questions socially, ethically, economically. But now is not the time to hit any'pause button'. On the contrary, it is about acting fast and taking responsibility," said Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market.

The two European Parliament co-rapporteurs finalised the Artificial Intelligence (AI) draft report on Monday (11 April), covering where they have found common ground. The most controversial issues have been pushed further down the line. Liberal Dragoș Tudorache and social-democrat Brando Benifei have been spearheading the discussion on the AI Act for the civil rights and consumer protection committees of the European Parliament, respectively. "There are things that we agreed already, and they will be in the draft report, and things on which we think that we will agree, but because we haven't found right now the common denominator, we did not put them in the report," Tudorache said. "Our approach has been to make this regulation truly human-centric," Benifei told EURACTIV.