On October 13th, 2023, the European Commission launched a stakeholder survey on the eleven draft guiding principles for Generative AI (GAI) and other advanced AI systems. This initiative comes a few days after the 8th annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, organised by the United Nations.

Drawing on intense criticism from online publishers across the European Union (EU) against Generative AI (GAI), the present article aims to highlight the highly debated copyright issue of data collection for Generative AI training. Three questions are therefore addressed: To what extent is scraping data for GAI training considered to be a copyright issue; How Data scraping and data mining are regulated under EU Law and; How the future AI Act intends to deal with the use of training data.

Between 21 and 23 April, the European Commission (Commission) held the closing session of the European citizens’ panels, to debate and propose recommendations on virtual worlds in the EU. As a result, a panel of 150 citizens has contributed to the provision of 23 recommendations on ‘fair and human-centric virtual worlds in the EU’.

Using innovative AI techniques, Berkeley’s researchers have analysed more than 2.5 million fully anonymized metaverse data recordings and found that individual users could be uniquely identified. The study stresses the need to enhance security and privacy awareness in relation to these platforms.

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 October 13th, 2022, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) published an Opinion entitled “Recommendation for a Council Decision authorising the opening of negotiations on behalf of the European Union for a Council of Europe convention on artificial intelligence, human rights, democracy and the rule of law”. This independent supervisory authority welcomes the initiative taken by the European Commission to authorise negotiations on behalf of the EU regarding the future Council of Europe’s (CoE) Convention on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

On September 28th, 2022, the European Commission released two proposals, the aim of which is to regulate civil liability in relation to AI-enabled systems, drawing from the Commission’s White Paper1 considerations on the use of such systems: a revised version of the Defective Product Liability Directive (PLD)2 and a Directive that adapts non-contractual civil liability rules to Artificial Intelligence (AI Liability Directive)3. The combination of these proposals with that of April 21st, 2021, Laying Down Harmonized Rules On Artificial Intelligence (AI Act)4, will result in the national liability frameworks being adapted to the digital age, the circular economy and global value chains.

European Digital Rights (EDRi), an association of civil and human rights organisations, published, on September 7th, 2022, its position paper on the European Union’s proposed “Regulation on automated data exchange for police cooperation”, known as Prüm II.  The report underlines several issues concerning the draft regulation, the purpose of which is to modify the data sharing process between EU member states, by including, among other things, ‘automated searching of facial images’.

For several years now, the European Commission has been working on a number of projects concerned with regulating Artificial Intelligence, digital services, and digital markets.  It has now issued a proposal for tighter rules on liability with regard to the technology industry. Amid these developments, a coalition of start-ups, small and medium enterprises, and technology companies sent a letter, dated August 24, 2022, to the European Commission expressing their concerns about the forthcoming European legislation, which seeks to modify the liability rules concerning artificial intelligence.

On August 26, 2022, the European Commission published a set of rules that it says automated driving systems (ADS) must meet in order to be approved. The regulation focuses on the need to assure that performance requirements are met, and the safety of automated driving systems demonstrated, before they can be approved. For this purpose, the Commission considers it necessary to introduce measures aimed at making automated driving systems more safe, and strict parameters regarding their manufacture.

The European Commission’s April 2021 proposal for a Regulation aiming at harmonized rules across the EU for AI is a major legal development and the negotiations at the EU level will be particularly interesting and tough. Renaissance Numérique and AI-Regulation contribute to the debate.

On September 14th and 15th 2021, the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union hosted a High-Level Conference on Artificial Intelligence entitled “From ambition to Action”.