E.U. AI Talks Paused After 22 Hours, Will Start Again Friday

(LONDON) — European Union talks on world-leading comprehensive artificial intelligence regulations were paused Thursday after 22 straight hours, with officials yet to hammer out a deal on a rulebook for the rapidly advancing technology behind popular services like ChatGPT.

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European Commissioner Thierry Breton tweeted that talks, which began Wednesday afternoon in Brussels and ran through the night, would resume on Friday morning.

“Lots of progress made over past 22 hours” on the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, he wrote. “Stay tuned!”

Representatives of the bloc’s 27 member states, lawmakers and executive commissioners are under the gun to secure a political agreement for the flagship AI Act. They spent hours wrangling over controversial points such as generative AI and AI-powered police facial recognition.

There was disagreement over whether and how to regulate foundation models, the advanced systems that underpin general purpose AI services like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot.

EU lawmakers also want a full ban on facial recognition systems because of privacy concerns, but they are at odds with governments from member countries that want to use it for law enforcement.

Officials are eager to sign off on a deal in time for final approval from the European Parliament before it breaks up for bloc-wide elections next year. They’re also scrambling to get it done by the end of December, when Spain’s turn at the rotating EU presidency ends.

Once it gets final approval, the AI Act wouldn’t take effect until 2025 at the earliest.