Are you interested in the societal impacts and major legal issues posed by the development of Artificial Intelligence and new technologies, including the Metaverse? Do you have a PhD in legal studies (preferably digital law, intellectual property law or European/International/Human Rights law)? Are you ready to dive into the issues that concern protection of personal data and privacy, freedom of expression and other human rights in the era of AI? Do you have an open and curious mind?

On February 16th, 2023, the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court arrived at the decision that Land Hesse’s and Hambourg’s legislation “authorising the police to process stored personal data through automated data analysis or automated data interpretation” is unconstitutional.

On February 2nd, 2023, the Italian Data Protection Agency (Garante Per La Protezione Dei Dati Personali) urgently ordered a temporary limitation “on the processing of personal data relating to users in the Italian territory as performed by Luka Inc., the US-based developer and operator of Replika, in its capacity as controller of the processing of personal data that is carried out via the said app”.

On December 16, 2022, Katia Bouslimani successfully defended her PhD Thesis entitled “Consent in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)” in front of a Jury composed of Professors Brunessen Bertrand, Gloria González Fuster, Celia Zolynski, Peter Swire and Jean-Michel Bruguière and the supervisors of the PhD Thesis Karine Bannelier and Theodore Christakis.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the U.S. Department of Commerce released, on January 26, 2023, the AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0.) in collaboration with the private and public sectors.

The purpose of the Convention is to ensure that during their lifecycle, AI systems fully comply with human rights, respect the functioning of democracy and observe the rule of law, regardless of whether these activities are undertaken by public or private actors. The design, development and application of AI systems used for purposes related to national defence are expressly excluded from the scope of this Convention. The negotiators seem to agree that such a Convention must be seen first and foremost as a broad framework which might be supplemented by further obligations in more specific fields.

On December 8th, 2022, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) published a report on algorithm biases, in particular when used for predictive policing and offensive speech detection.

On December 15th, 2022, the European Union adopted an interinstitutional declaration on digital rights and principles that will guide the EU’s ambition to be “digitally sovereign in an open and interconnected world, and to pursue digital policies that empower people and businesses to seize a human centred, sustainable and more prosperous digital future”.

On December 6th, 2022, EU Member States voted on a “general approach” to the upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). On the same day, 192 civil society organisations and individuals published an open letter calling on the EU to modify a number of aspects of the AI Act to protect migrants from the risks that AI systems may pose to their fundamental rights.

On November 8th, 2022, the Information Commissioner’s Office (British DPA) published a document entitled ‘How to use AI and personal data appropriately and lawfully’, which is a guide to how data controllers should use AI systems in accordance with the law and in particular with people’s fundamental rights. This publication also contains a ‘frequently asked questions’ section which addresses certain specific issues that data controllers may have to deal with. 

The Italian ‘Garante per la protezione dei dati personali’ (Italian data protection authority) published a press release on November 14th, 2022, in which it announced that it had opened two separate investigations into the use of ‘smart video systems’ by two Italian municipalities.

The ‘Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés’ (CNIL – the French DPA) released its final decision on October 20th, 2022, sanctioning Clearview AI for its unlawful activity, which consists of collecting images of millions of individuals from the open web without any legal basis under the GDPR for doing so.