Sour climate
A sour climate around the EU’s AI regulations and the drafting process for the guidance will likely affect tech companies’ calculations on how to respond.
“The process for the code has so far not been well managed,” said Finnish European Parliament lawmaker Aura Salla, a conservative politician and former lobbyist for Meta, ahead of Thursday’s announcement.
The thirteen experts produced a total of four drafts over nine months, a process that garnered the attention of over 1,000 participants and was discussed in several iterations of plenaries and four working groups — often in the evenings since some of the experts were based in the U.S. or Canada.
The Commission’s Regnier applauded the process as “inclusive,” but both industry and civil society groups said they felt they had not been heard.
The U.S. tech companies that must now decide whether to sign the code have also shown themselves critical of the EU’s approach to other parts of its AI regulation.
Tech lobby groups, such as the CCIA, were among the first to call for a pause on the parts of the EU’s AI Act that had not yet been implemented — specifically, obligations for companies deploying high-risk AI systems, which are set to take effect next year.
