recently,European UnionA consultation on rules for providers of general purpose artificial intelligence (GPAI) has been officially launched. These providers include well-known AI companies such as Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. The consultation is aimed atArtificial Intelligence ActUnder the AI Act framework, it provides guidance to developers on how to comply with legal obligations to ensure the “trustworthiness” of GPAI.
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According to the plan, the EU's AI Act will officially come into effect on August 1, but the compliance period for the implementation of the Act is phased in, and the relevant code of conduct will take effect nine months later, that is, until April 2025. This leaves ample time for the EU to formulate relevant guidelines.
The European Commission hopes to seek the opinions of GPAI providers, businesses, civil society representatives, rights holders and academic experts through this consultation. The Commission said: "This consultation provides an opportunity for all stakeholders to express their views on the topics covered in the first code of conduct." In addition, this feedback will help related work, especially in the development of a template for summaries of GPAI model training content and related guidance.
The consultation questionnaire is divided into three parts, the first of which concerns the transparency and copyright-related provisions of GPAI; the second part focuses on the risk classification, assessment and mitigation rules of GPAI with systemic risks; and the third part discusses the review and monitoring of the GPAI Code of Conduct. The committee said that it will formulate a preliminary draft of the Code of Conduct based on the feedback submitted and the answers to the target questions.
Participants in the consultation will have the opportunity to influence the templates that the AI Office provides to GPAI providers, helping them meet the legal requirement to provide summaries of model training content. In addition, the AI Office has issued a letter of intent to participate in the drafting of the Code of Conduct, inviting qualified GPAI providers, downstream providers and other independent experts from relevant organizations and academia to participate.
Interested parties can submit their expressions of interest by August 25. The AI Office also plans to organize workshops to facilitate participants to communicate with the moderators and co-moderators of the meeting to provide information support for the subsequent drafting. The AI Office will ensure the transparency of these discussions and will make the meeting minutes available for all participants to review.
The consultation and development of the code of conduct responds to previous concerns that civil society organisations might be excluded, with the European Commission saying all interested parties are encouraged to participate.
