Alphabet (GOOGL)-owned Google has declared it is ready to sign up for Europe’s AI Act despite warning that it is likely to leave technological development on the continent out in the cold.
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Don’t Chill Out
Google, whose shares were lower in pre-market trading, said it will sign the European Union’s code of practice, which aims to help companies comply with the AI Act.
The voluntary code of practice, drawn up by 13 independent experts, aims to provide legal certainty to signatories on how to meet requirements under the Act, such as issuing summaries of the content used to train their general-purpose AI models and complying with EU copyright law.
“We do so with the hope that this code, as applied, will promote European citizens’ and businesses’ access to secure, first-rate AI tools as they become available,” said Kent Walker, Alphabet’s chief legal officer.
He added, however, that Google was concerned that the Act and code of practice risk slowing Europe’s development and deployment of AI.
“In particular, departures from EU copyright law, steps that slow approvals, or requirements that expose trade secrets could chill European model development and deployment, harming Europe’s competitiveness,” Walker said.
Europe matters to Google, given that it is its second-biggest revenue market.
U.S. Rivals
It is understood that U.S. tech rival Microsoft (MSFT) will also sign up to the code. However, others such as Meta Platforms (META) have declined to do so citing the legal uncertainties for model developers.
The code is intended to help thousands of businesses in the 27-nation trading bloc using general-purpose AI technology to comply with its new AI rule book. These include chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The AI Act bans cognitive behavioral manipulation and social scoring. It also defines a set of “high-risk” uses, such as biometrics and facial recognition, or AI used in domains like education and employment. App developers will have to register their systems and meet risk and quality management obligations to gain EU access. Violations could draw fines of up to 35 million euros ($41 million), or 7% of a company’s global revenue.
It is part of a wider crackdown by the EU and the U.K. on what they deem to be the dominance of U.S. tech on the continent. This has resulted in a number of fines being handed out to firms such as Meta in recent months.
It is why legal and regulatory risks are becoming increasingly key for U.S. tech stocks.
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