The European Union is preparingdue to pressure from big technology companies, a simplification and relaxation of some of its rules related to AI and privacy. According to Bloomberg, the decision has been made to boost the competitiveness of local technology and AI sector companies.
The news comes after months in which the activity of the US technology lobbies, with the main multinationals in the sector at the forefront, and even Trump himself, have pushed hard for the EU to not be so restrictive with its rules on AI and privacy, and opt for a solution more in line with its claims.
However, several European technology companies, as well as some member states, have also criticized EU regulations as excessive and poorly defined. Some European technology companies, such as Apple and Meta, have delayed the launch of products and services in the EU due to regulations, which many criticize for being too complex and even contradictory, which has raised fears that Europe could fall behind the United States and China in certain emerging technologies.
Thus, the executive division of the EU, the European Commission, will present on November 19 a kind of “digital omnibus”, which de facto simplifies its data protection regulations, such as the GDPR, as well as its AI Law. According to the Head of technology policy at the Commission, Henna Virkkunenit is necessary that there be less bureaucracy to facilitate the growth of the sector.
The draft of the digital omnibus that is apparently going to see the light of day in a few days seeks to make it easier for companies to train AI models with personal data of citizens residing in the EU. It includes measures that allow companies to process sensitive data, such as race or religion, to ensure that biases are detected and minimized.
In addition, the package will specify what personal data is within EU law. This, in some cases, would exclude certain data that have been transformed into pseudonyms and that are more complex to relate to a specific person. Companies may also be exempt from the prohibition on the processing of special categories of personal data «so as not to disproportionately affect the development and functioning of AI, and taking into account the controller’s capabilities to identify and delete special categories of personal data«.
As stated by the Commissioner Spokesperson Thomas Regnier last Friday, with the digital bus they will have the possibility «to listen to the concerns of our industry, to address them with different measures that we have taken since the beginning of the mandate to reduce the administrative burdens of our companies and startups«.
Some provisions of the AI Act are already in effect, and requirements for so-called high-risk AI systems will go into effect next August. Several European industry and technology groups have pressured the commission to freeze the implementation of rules for high-risk AI systems until it adopts standards on how to apply these rules. For now, no decision has been made to delay these regulations.
The draft law has a marker that indicates that it has measures still being evaluated on the «alignment of implementation times«. It also includes a one-year grace period for suppliers of generative AI products in the market, so that they can incorporate marking labels that clearly identify the audiovisual material generated by AI.
The proposed changes to the rules that will likely be presented in the digital omnibus will, however, need to have the approval of the members of the European Parliament, as well as that of the member states, to become law.
Unsurprisingly, according to Reuters, the Austrian privacy group noyb, of which digital rights and privacy activist Max Schrems is Presidentdoes not agree with these changes, and those responsible point out that «The draft digital omnibus proposes numerous changes to many different articles of the GDPR. In combination, it means a slow death«. Schrems himself has highlighted that «sIt would be a huge degradation of the privacy of Europeans, which would take 10 years before the GDPR was adopted«.
