Apple will delay launching three new artificial intelligence features in Europe because European Union competition rules require the company ensure that rival products and services can function with its devices. The features will launch in the fall in the US but will not arrive in Europe until 2025. The company said on Friday three features – Phone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence – will not be rolled out to EU users this year because of regulatory uncertainties due to the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). Apple said the EU's regulations would force it to compromise its devices' security, an argument it has made before and that EU officials have pushed back on. "Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security," Apple said in an email.

For a couple of years, the EU Commission has worked on rules, regulations, and incentives around Artificial Intelligence. On April 21st, it released the long-awaited proposal for harmonized regulations on AI. The proposal to be adopted in national legislation is a far-reaching set of rules that will impact all organizations, at par and perhaps even more comprehensive, than GDPR. Understanding the basics of the new rules and the organizational impact is a requirement for all senior executives. An

Thus far, most attempts at making policy for artificial intelligence have fallen into one of two camps: either outright bans on certain applications of machine learning--for instance, the facial recognitions bans passed in a few cities in the United States--or very broad, high-level principles that offer no concrete guidance or specific rules, like the "Ethical Principles for Artificial Intelligence" that the Department of Defense adopted in 2020 for developing and implementing A.I. in a responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable, and governable manner. There are obvious drawbacks to both of these approaches: The former seems neither sustainable nor scalable, given the pace with which machine learning is advancing and the extent to which both public and private entities seem eager to adopt it, while the latter often amounts to little more than window-dressing and vague reassurances that policymakers are at least thinking about the big questions posed by automated decision-making. That's why it was such a big deal when the European Commission released its proposed rules for artificial intelligence last week. While the rules are not yet final, the 108-page document "laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence" is certainly the closest any regulatory body has come to trying to develop more detailed and nuanced rules for A.I. than just banning certain uses or promise to implement these systems in generally ethical ways. European Commission executive vice president Margrethe Vestager hailed the new document as a set of "landmark rules" and others have since referred to them as "strict" or "ambitious," or an effort by the EU to become a "super-regulator."

The European Parliament is among the first institutions to put forward recommendations on what AI rules should include with regards to ethics, liability and intellectual property rights. These recommendations will pave the way for the EU to become a global leader in the development of AI. The Commission legislative proposal is expected early next year. The legislative initiative by Iban García del Blanco (S&D, ES) urges the EU Commission to present a new legal framework outlining the ethical principles and legal obligations to be followed when developing, deploying and using artificial intelligence, robotics and related technologies in the EU including software, algorithms and data. It was adopted with 559 votes in favour, 44 against, and 88 abstentions.

The government has published its long-awaited Brexit White Paper. The document is 104 pages long and follows last week's Chequers agreement which set out the sort of relationship the UK wants with the EU after Brexit. The White Paper is split into four chapters: economic partnership, security, cooperation and institutional arrangements. So here are the key excerpts from the chapter on "economic partnership" and what they mean. This is a line that emerged in the Chequers statement last Friday, and it is one of the most important in this White Paper. It is the UK government's answer to the concerns expressed by businesses that rely on "just-in-time" manufacturing supply chains (such as car manufacturers), and to the need to avoid the reimposition of a hard border in Ireland.

A controversial Facebook AI tool could soon be making a return to Europe and Canada. Facial recognition, launched in 2010, suggests names for people it identifies in photos uploaded by users. It was suspended for users in Europe in 2012 over privacy concerns, but still lives on in the US and other regions worldwide. Now the firm says it will make a comeback, using the new European data protection regulations as a chance to collect more information if users opt in. The move to reintroduce the image scanning software is likely to ruffle feathers, coming in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data handling debacle.