EU seeks agreement on sweeping rules to regulate artificial intelligence

The European Union will seek to thrash out an agreement on sweeping rules to regulate artificial intelligence, following months of difficult negotiations in particular on how to monitor generative AI like ChatGPT.

The EU is racing to approve the world's first comprehensive AI law on Wednesday after the issue took on greater urgency when the ChatGPT bot burst onto the scene last year, highlighting AI's dizzying advances.

ChatGPT wowed with its ability to produce poems and essays within seconds.

AI proponents say the technology will benefit humanity, transforming everything from work to healthcare, but others worry about the risks it poses to society, fearing it could thrust the world into unprecedented chaos.

Brussels is bent on bringing big tech to heel with a powerful legal armoury to protect EU citizens' rights, especially those covering privacy and data protection.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, first proposed an AI law in 2021 that would regulate systems based on the level of risk they posed. For example, the greater the risk to citizens' rights or health, the greater the systems' obligations.

Negotiations on the final legal text began in June, but a fierce debate in recent weeks over how to regulate general-purpose AI like ChatGPT and Google's Bard chatbot threatened talks at the last minute.

Some member states worry that too much regulation will stifle innovation and hurt the chances of producing European AI giants to challenge those in the United States, including ChatGPT's creator OpenAI as well as tech titans like Google and Meta.

Negotiators from the European Parliament and EU member states will meet on Wednesday from 1400 GMT, with talks expected to last into the evening.

Although there is no real deadline, senior EU figures have repeatedly said the bloc must finalise the law before the end of 2023.