Why in news? The European Parliament has approved the bloc’s landmark rules for artificial intelligence, known as the EU AI Act, clearing a major hurdle for the first formal regulation of AI in the West to become law.

Highlights:

• It is to adopt a key text forming the basis of a future law regulating artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT, aiming to foster innovation in the technology.
• If an agreement is reached by the end of the year, it would be the world’s first law regulating AI.
• The law would regulate AI according to the level of risk: the higher the risk to individuals’ rights or health, for example, the greater the systems’ obligations.
• The EU’s proposed high-risk list includes AI in critical infrastructure, education, human resources, public order and migration management.
• There are also special requirements for generative AI systems — those such as ChatGPT and DALL-E capable of producing text, images, code, audio and other media — that include informing users that a machine, not a human, produced the content.

Lawmakers also proposed bans on AI systems that use biometric surveillance, emotion recognition and so-called predictive policing