Regulation - General

Updated December 20, 2024

 

National Regulatory Initiatives

There has been fairly limited regulation of AI to date, but the pace of regulation is increasing, led by the EU and its AI Act. Some key regulatory initiatives around the world are:

 

Multilateral Regulatory Initiatives

There is also multilateral work on AI safety:

  • AI summits

    • The AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in the UK in November 2023 was a first step towards multilateral cooperation on AI safety. Significantly, the two leading AI powers US and China participated together in the AI Safety Summit (it has been reported that US AI companies engaged in discussions with Chinese AI experts earlier in 2023, with government support).

    • The Bletchley Park summit was followed by the AI Seoul Summit in May 2024.

    • South Korea also convened a summit on use of AI in the military in September 2024.

  • United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

  • Council of Europe - Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law (May 2024) sets out broad but high-level obligations on its signatories that "aim to ensure that activities within the lifecycle of artificial intelligence systems are fully consistent with human rights, democracy and the rule of law".

  • G7 - The G7 Competition Authorities and Policymakers’ Summit released a Digital Competition Communiqué in October 2024 on competition issues for AI systems.

  • The US and EU signed an Administrative Arrangement on Artificial Intelligence for the Public Good in January 2024, regarding cooperation on AI research, including safety and privacy issues. It has been reported that the US AI Safety Institute and EU AI Office are planning cooperative work on generative AI.

 

Other Considerations

A key consideration in AI regulation is the definition of "artificial intelligence", which establishes a basis for what is regulated. A leading definition is the one updated by the OECD in November 2023: "An AI system is a machine-based system that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments. Different AI systems vary in their levels of autonomy and adaptiveness after deployment."

 

In an interesting (and likely future-looking) twist on AI regulation, the Porto Alegre City Council in Brazil in November 2023 passed a law on water meters, which is believed to be the world's first law entirely drafted by ChatGPT (and possibly AI generally).

 

Regulatory Summaries

There are various more detailed summaries of developing AI regulation, including from:

 

Privacy Law

There are also some restrictions on use of AI in existing and proposed privacy laws, such as: