Among the key acts issued by the European Union is undoubtedly the so-called "AI act. (AIA)"; this is the Proposal Regulation laying down harmonized rules on artifcial intelligence of April 21, 2021 . 2 The Proposal has the merit of providing several defnitions, contained in Article 3, which is headed "Defnitions". The frst defnition is precisely that of "artifcial intelligence". The provision reads: «'artifcial intelligence' (AI system) means software developed with one or more of the techniques and approaches listed in Annex I and can, for a given set of human-defned objectives, generate outputs such as content, predictions, recommendations, or decisions infuencing the environments they interact with». This is a rather vague defnition, referring to the specifc lists in Annex I. The Artifcial Intelligence Act (AIA) defnes various areas of focus of AI systems: applications prohibited because they cause unbearable risks to fundamental rights and freedoms ; high-risk applications 3 (not prohibited but subject to specifc conditions to manage risks) ; limited-risk 4 applications and other applications with negligible risk . 5 The list of banned AI systems includes online manipulative practices that produce physical or psychological harm to individuals or exploit their vulnerability based on age or disability; social scoring that produces disproportionate or decontextualized harmful efects; and biometric identifcation systems used by law enforcement in public spaces (when their use is not strictly necessary or when the risk of harmful efects is too high). For the frst time, European regulators are attempting to defne a boundary or limit that should not be crossed when employing AI-based services or products in society. Unlike prohibited AI systems, AI systems classifed as "high risk" are not prohibited by default, but subject to several compliance obligations. These obligations include, among others, a risk management plan, compliance certifcation, a data management plan, and human oversight. The list of high-risk AI systems in the AIA includes facial recognition; AI used in critical infrastructure; in educational, employment, or emergency contexts; in For an analysis of the proposed regulation see Finocchiaro, G. (2022) ‘La proposta di regolamento 2 sull’intelligenza artifciale: il modello europeo basato sulla gestione del rischio’, Diritto dell’informazione e dell’informatica, 2022/2, pp. 303-327; Towsend, B. (2021) ‘Decoding the Proposed European Union Artifcial Intelligence Act’, Insights, 25(20); Veale, M., Borgesius, F.Z. (2021) Demystifying the Draft EU Artifcial Intelligence Act, in Computer Law Review International, 4/2021, pp. 97-112. Such indications can be found in art. 5 of the AIA. 3 These kinds of systems are indicated analytically in the annex III of the Proposal. 4 Some information is provided in the explanatory memorandum of the AIA. 5 2
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE4NzM5Nw==