“We are not happy, but it could have been worse,” answered Daniel Abbou, President of the EU AI Forum, when asked by moderator Milly Doolan, Managing Director at EuroNavigator, for his thoughts on the European AI law that came into force at the beginning of August. Alongside Abbou, the panel on the topic “AI Act is out, what now?” included Łukasz Gabler, TikTok’s Public Policy and Government Relations Manager for the CEE region, and Orestis Trasanidis, Director of Silicon Valley and Head of AI at EIT Digital.
Since the AI law now requires implementation by each EU member state, the panelists expressed concerns about how it will ultimately take shape.
“Although I consider AI highly useful, this regulation has introduced new obstacles for its development and even more bureaucracy, which could hinder the creative process,” Trasanidis pointed out.
Can something that is constantly evolving be regulated? The panelists agreed that time will tell, but in the upcoming process of implementing the law, the most important task is to demystify AI. They noted that many people today do not fully understand AI’s role and are fearful of its impact on society. An additional question is whether regulation will help at all, as people generally distrust AI, yet they also dislike overregulation.
Gabler from TikTok mentioned that the company began preparing for this law in 2023 and was the first to label AI-generated content.
The conclusion of the panel is that for the quality development of AI, we need to work on education and ethics, which is important both when creating and using AI tools.
