The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into Chinese e-commerce site AliExpress over concerns about illegal and pornographic content on its platform. In a statement on Thursday, the European Union's executive arm said it would investigate the e-commerce giant under its Digital Services Act (DSA), a law requiring companies to do more to tackle illegal and harmful products on their platforms. The probe will determine if AliExpress breached the DSA in "areas linked to the management and mitigation of risks, to content moderation and the internal complaint handling mechanism, to the transparency of advertising and recommender systems, [and] to the traceability of traders and data access for researchers," the commission said. Fake medicines, food, and dietary supplements sales – as well as pornographic material that the commission said minors can still access on the website – are major issues, the statement read. How AliExpress recommends products to shoppers and whether the site complies with a rule requiring a searchable repository of adverts provided on the platform are other areas of investigation.

The Washington Post reports that after a marathon 72-hour debate European Union legislators Friday have reached a historic deal on a broad-ranging AI safety development bill, the most expansive and far-reaching of its kind to date. Details of the deal itself were not immediately available. The proposed regulations would dictate the ways in which future machine learning models can be developed and distributed within the trade bloc, impacting its use in applications ranging from education to employment to healthcare. AI development would be split among four categories, depending on how much societal risk each potentially poses -- minimal, limited, high, and banned. Banned uses would include anything that circumvents the user's will, targets protected groups or provides real-time biometric tracking (like facial recognition).

This article is part of a special report on artificial intelligence, The AI Issue. Europe's plan to ride a new wave of AI innovation into a technological renaissance relies on companies sharing their data with researchers and entrepreneurs. But will the companies play along? According to interviews with industry groups representing Silicon Valley, European tech companies and Germany's industrial base, the answer for now is: maybe, but only to a limited extent, and even then only when sharing data will not benefit rivals. "We haven't seen any single company speaking up in public saying it was a great idea," said Alexandre Roure of the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a tech lobby whose members include Google and Facebook.

Paris, France – Munich, Germany: Atos, a global digital transformation major has opened its German Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory in Munich. In this innovative lab, Atos is developing solutions for its clients business using AI and other cutting-edge technologies. At the opening ceremony Thierry Breton, Atos – CEO and Chairman highlighted the relevance of AI for the industry and the economy. "Artificial Intelligence solutions have the power to be true game changers: For individual companies as well as entire economies, the holistic implementation of digital techniques leveraging AI is key to their success in the future," said Thierry Breton, Atos CEO and Chairman. "Our AI Lab is the right platform for the collaborative development of tangible digital use cases that deliver long-term value as quickly as possible," added Breton.