The EU's AI Act: The Position Is Agreed

In the early hours of the morning of Saturday 9 December 2023, the European Parliament (the Parliament) and the Council of the EU (the Council) reached an agreement on the outstanding points on the EU's Regulation on artificial intelligence (AI Act). Talks had previously stalled over how to regulate AI trained on large amounts of data and able to perform a wide range of functions, referred to as 'foundation models' or 'general purpose AI'. The lack of progress had led to questions over whether the AI Act would be finalised before the end of Spain's presidency of the Council at the end of the year, and whether an agreement would be possible before the next Parliament elections in June 2024. Extending this week's talks by a further day, however, the Parliament and Council were able to reach an agreement on the outstanding points.