It aims to protect fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability from high-risk AI, while boosting innovation and establishing Europe as a leader in the field. The regulation establishes obligations for AI based on its potential risks and level of impact.

The new rules ban certain AI applications that threaten citizens’ rights, including biometric categorization systems based on sensitive characteristics and untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases.

The regulation is still subject to a final lawyer-linguist check and is expected to be finally adopted before the end of the legislature. The law also needs to be formally endorsed by the Council. It will enter into force twenty days after its publication in the Official Journal and be fully applicable 24 months after its entry into force, except for bans on prohibited practices, which will apply six months after the entry into force date.

Access the press release on the EU’s website.