On September 19, 2019, the European Parliament Research Service (EPRS) released a paper, European Union (EU) Guidelines on Ethics in Artificial Intelligence (AI): Context and Implementation (“Paper”), to shed light on the ethical rules that were established under the EU Guidelines on Ethics in AI (“Guidelines”). The Guidelines, which are nonbinding, were published in April 2019 after the European Parliament was directed to update and complement the existing Union legal framework with guiding ethical principles that are based on a “human-centric” approach to AI.

The Paper aims to provide guidance on the key ethical requirements that are recommended in the Guidelines when designing, developing, implementing or using AI products and services to promote trustworthy, ethical and robust AI systems. The Paper also identifies some implementation challenges and possible future EU action while also calling for certain actions including clarifying the Guidelines, fostering the adoption of ethical standards and adopting legally binding instruments to set common rules on transparency.

Of note, the Guidelines highlight that all AI stakeholders must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) principles and advise the AI community to guarantee that privacy and personal data are protected, both when building and when running AI systems to afford citizens full control over their data. Thereupon, AI developers are directed to apply specific design techniques, such as data encryption and data anonymization. Additionally, AI developers should implement the proper oversight mechanisms to ensure socially constructed bias or inaccuracies do not corrupt the quality of the data sets or AI systems.

While the implementing phase of the Guidelines has begun, academics and stakeholders are concerned about a number of implementation challenges. It remains to be seen whether the new Guidelines will spur further EU action ranging from soft law guidance, standardization or legislation in the field of ethics and AI. Additionally the European Commission (EC) President-elect, Ursula von der Leyen, announced that the Commission would put forward further legislative proposals for a coordinated European approach to AI. The Akin Gump cross-practice AI team will continue to monitor developments.