Negotiators from the European Parliament and the bloc's 27 member countries overcame big differences on controversial points including generative AI and police use of face recognition surveillance to sign a tentative political agreement for the Artificial Intelligence Act.

"Deal!" tweeted European Commissioner Thierry Breton just before midnight. "The EU becomes the very first continent to set clear rules for the use of AI."

The result came after marathon closed-door talks this week, with the initial session lasting 22 hours before a second round kicked off Friday morning.

Officials were under the gun to secure a political victory for the flagship legislation. Civil society groups, however, gave it a cool reception as they wait for technical details that will need to be ironed out in the coming weeks. They said the deal didn't go far enough in protecting people from harm caused by AI systems.

"Today’s political deal marks the beginning of important and necessary technical work on crucial details of the AI Act, which are still missing," said Daniel Friedlaender, head of the European office of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a tech industry lobby group.

The EU took an early lead in the global race to draw up AI guardrails when it unveiled the first draft of its rulebook in 2021. The recent boom in generative AI, however, sent European officials scrambling to update a proposal poised to serve as a blueprint for the world.

The European Parliament will still need to vote on the act early next year, but with the deal done that’s a formality, Brando Benifei, an Italian lawmaker co-leading the body’s negotiating efforts, told The Associated Press late Friday.

"It’s very very good," he said by text message after being asked if it included everything he wanted. "Obviously we had to accept some compromises but overall very good." The eventual law wouldn’t fully take effect until 2025 at the earliest, and threatens stiff financial penalties for violations of up to 35 million euros ($38 million) or 7% of a company's global turnover.

Generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have exploded into the world's consciousness, dazzling users with the ability to produce human-like text, photos and songs but raising fears about the risks the rapidly developing technology poses to jobs, privacy and copyright protection and even human life itself.

Race for AI rules

Now, the U.S., U.K., China and global coalitions like the Group of 7 major democracies have jumped in with their own proposals to regulate AI, though they’re still catching up to Europe.

Strong and comprehensive rules from the EU “can set a powerful example for many governments considering regulation,” said Anu Bradford, a Columbia Law School professor who's an expert on EU law and digital regulation. Other countries “may not copy every provision but will likely emulate many aspects of it.”

AI companies subject to the EU's rules will also likely extend some of those obligations outside the continent, she said. “After all, it is not efficient to re-train separate models for different markets," she said.

The AI Act was originally designed to mitigate the dangers from specific AI functions based on their level of risk, from low to unacceptable. But lawmakers pushed to expand it to foundation models, the advanced systems that underpin general purpose AI services like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot.

Foundation models looked set to be one of the biggest sticking points for Europe. However, negotiators managed to reach a tentative compromise early in the talks, despite opposition led by France, which called instead for self-regulation to help homegrown European generative AI companies competing with big U.S rivals, including OpenAI's backer Microsoft.

Also known as large language models, these systems are trained on vast troves of written works and images scraped off the internet. They give generative AI systems the ability to create something new, unlike traditional AI, which processes data and completes tasks using predetermined rules.

The companies building foundation models will have to draw up technical documentation, comply with EU copyright law and detail the content used for training. The most advanced foundation models that pose “systemic risks” will face extra scrutiny, including assessing and mitigating those risks, reporting serious incidents, putting cybersecurity measures in place and reporting their energy efficiency.

Researchers Warning

Researchers have warned that powerful foundation models, built by a handful of big tech companies, could be used to supercharge online disinformation and manipulation, cyberattacks or creation of bioweapons.

Rights groups also caution that the lack of transparency about data used to train the models poses risks to daily life because they act as basic structures for software developers building AI-powered services.

What became the thorniest topic was AI-powered face recognition surveillance systems, and negotiators found a compromise after intensive bargaining.

European lawmakers wanted a full ban on public use of face scanning and other “remote biometric identification” systems because of privacy concerns. But governments of member countries succeeded in negotiating exemptions so law enforcement could use them to tackle serious crimes like child sexual exploitation or terrorist attacks.

Rights groups said they were concerned about the exemptions and other big loopholes in the AI Act, including lack of protection for AI systems used in migration and border control, and the option for developers to opt-out of having their systems classified as high risk.

"Whatever the victories may have been in these final negotiations, the fact remains that huge flaws will remain in this final text," said Daniel Leufer, a senior policy analyst at the digital rights group Access Now.

In March, 184 moderators sacked by Sama, a company contracted by Meta to review Facebook posts, brought a lawsuit claiming unfair dismissal and alleging that workers in Kenya were subjected to inhumane conditions, including forced labor and irregular pay.

A Kenyan court suspended the mass sacking in June and two months later allowed Meta and the moderators to pursue an out-of-court settlement.

"The looming court battle follows the collapse today of talks," UK-based legal activist firm Foxglove, which is supporting the case, said in a statement.

"The moderators informed the court that Meta and Sama made very little attempt to address core issues raised by the petitioners," it said, adding that they will also sue for contempt of court.

The talks — mediated by Kenya's former chief justice Willy Mutunga and an official from the labour ministry — were due to last for 21 days from August 23.

The moderators' counsel, Mercy Mutemi, accused Meta and Sama of "buying time and not being genuine."

"We kept waiting for them to participate... only for them to keep asking for an extension of time and then come back every time to refuse to take accountability," Mutemi said in the Foxglove statement.

"As long as the respondents are serious in engaging, we are happy to engage," she added.

Meta — which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp — is yet to comment on Monday's announcement.

The company is facing two other legal cases in Kenya.

In 2022, a former South African employee of Sama, Daniel Motaung, filed a complaint in Kenya against Sama and Facebook.

Motaung alleged, among other things, poor working conditions and a lack of mental health support.

The Silicon Valley giant is also facing another complaint in Kenya, where a local NGO and two Ethiopian citizens have accused Meta of failing to act against online hate speech in Africa.

AFP is involved in a partnership with Meta providing fact-checking services in Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.

In the latest in a series of messages to tech CEOs that has already seen him sparring with Elon Musk on X, formerly Twitter, the EU industry commissioner wrote to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

The letter was also posted online on the Bluesky social media platform, an upstart rival to Musk's X, and warns YouTube to comply with the terms of the EU's new Digital Services Act (DSA).

"Following the terrorist acts carried out by Hamas against Israel, we are seeing a surge of illegal content and disinformation being disseminated in the EU via certain platforms," Breton wrote.

This warning mirrored the previous letters to Musk, Facebook and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Chinese giant TikTok's Shou Zi Chew earlier this week.

Breton noted that YouTube in particular is used by many children and teenagers and warned that Google thus has a special responsibility to protect users from propaganda and violent or harmful images.

"Notwithstanding the fact that my team will follow up with a specific request on a number of issues to establish DSA compliance, I urge you to proactively report in a prompt, accurate and complete manner to the aspects raised in this letter," Breton wrote.

"As you know, following the opening of a potential investigation and a finding of non-compliance, penalties can be imposed."

In October last year, the government lifted a decade-old ban on GM crops in response to dwindling food security following the worst drought to ravage the Horn of Africa region in 40 years.

Kenyan lawyer Paul Mwangi swiftly launched a court challenge, arguing the decision was unconstitutional as there were concerns over the safety of the crops.

But environment court judge Oscar Angote ruled on Thursday that there was no evidence to show any harm to nature or human health.

"As a country, we need to trust the institutions that we have in place and call them to order when they breach the law," Angote said, making reference to government bodies that regulate GM foods.

"We should be confident that our health is in good hands."

There was no immediate response about the ruling from Mwangi, a lawyer who is close to the opposition.

Kenya, like many other African nations, banned GM crops over health and safety concerns and to protect smallholder farms, which account for the vast majority of rural agricultural producers in the country.

However, the East African powerhouse faced criticism over the ban including from the United States which is a major producer of GM crops.

Activists and agriculture lobby groups have protested over the lifting of the ban, saying it opened the market to US farmers using sophisticated technologies and highly subsidised farming that threatened the livelihoods of small-scale farmers.

Agriculture is the biggest single contributor to Kenya's economy, generating more than 21 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) last year, according to government figures.

The agricultural sector employs about 12 percent of Kenya's 19 million workers, behind the education sector and manufacturing.