Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Category Archives: EU Data Protection

Everything you need to know to prepare for the EU’s AI Act

sifted: “EU lawmakers finally came to an agreement on the AI Act at the end of 2023 — a piece of legislation that had been in the works for years to regulate artificial intelligence and prevent misuses of the technology. Now the text is going through a series of votes before it becomes EU law and it is looking likely that it will come into force by summer 2024. That means that any business, big or small, that produces or deploys AI models in the EU will need to start thinking about a new set of rules and obligations to follow. No company is expected to be compliant immediately after the law is voted through — in fact, most businesses can expect a two-year period of transition. But it’s still worth doing some planning ahead, especially for startups with smaller or no legal teams.  “Don’t bury your head in the sand,” says Marianne Tordeux-Bitker, director of public affairs at startup and VC lobby France Digitale. “Implement the processes that will enable you to anticipate.” “Those that get started and develop systems that are compliant by design will develop a real competitive advantage,” adds Matthieu Luccheshi, specialist in digital regulation at law firm Gide Loyrette Nouel. Since a read through the AI Act is likely to raise more questions than it answers, Sifted put together the key elements that founders must be aware of as they prepare for the new rules…”

Axel Springer vs. Google

Fortune: “Axel Springer is at Google’s throat again. The German news-publishing giant (for which I worked in my days at Politico) has a long history of battling Google over the issue of so-called ancillary copyright fees—payments for carrying snippets of text and thumbnail images in search results. But now it’s waging war on another front:… Continue Reading

Data Is What Data Does: Regulating Based on Harm and Risk Instead of Sensitive Data

Data Is What Data Does: Regulating Based on Harm and Risk Instead of Sensitive Data, 118 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1081 (2024). “Heightened protection for sensitive data is becoming quite trendy in privacy laws around the world. Originating in European Union (EU) data protection law and included in the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, sensitive… Continue Reading

Complaint filed against Alphabets plans to intercept 100s of billions of messages to train Bard

LinkedIn, Alexander Hanff: “Today I filed a complaint [included with lead link] with the Data Protection Commission Ireland as an open letter against Alphabets plans to introduce their Bard AI into Android Messages app and to intercept 100s of billions of confidential communications for the purpose of training their AI. This is a direct breach… Continue Reading

Meta unlawfully ignores the users’ right to easily withdraw consent

Noyb.eu: “Since the beginning of November, Instagram and Facebook users who don’t want to be tracked have to pay a “privacy fee” of up to € 251.88 per year. While one (free) click is enough to consent to being tracked, users can only withdraw their consent by going through the complicated process of switching to… Continue Reading

Antisemitism has moved from the right to the left in the US − and falls back on long-standing stereotypes

Via LLRX – Antisemitism has moved from the right to the left in the US − and falls back on long-standing stereotypes – Prof. Arie Perliger, director of the graduate program in Security Studies at the School of Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell addresses the fact the the U.S. is… Continue Reading

AI in Banking and Finance, October 15, 2023

Via LLRX – AI in Banking and Finance, September 15, 2023 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government reports, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available,… Continue Reading

IBM promised to back off facial recognition then signed a $69.8M contract to provide it

The Verge: “The company denies its new government deal enables ‘general purpose’ biometric surveillance. Human rights advocates disagree. IBM has returned to the facial recognition market — just three years after announcing it was abandoning work on the technology due to concerns about racial profiling, mass surveillance, and other human rights violations. In June 2020,… Continue Reading

Social media giants urged to tackle data-scraping privacy risks

Tech Crunch: “A joint statement signed by regulators at a dozen international privacy watchdogs, including the U.K.’s ICO, Canada’s OPC and Hong Kong’s OPCPD, has urged mainstream social media platforms to protect users’ public posts from scraping — warning they face a legal responsibility to do so in most markets. “In most jurisdictions, personal information… Continue Reading

How governments are looking to regulate AI

Economist Intelligence – EIU: The EU has taken the lead with the strictest rules, which will have the biggest impact globally Chinese rules are also strict, but their impact is domestic, and geared towards keeping control and power with the ruling party The US favours innovation, and its political system hinders any attempt at regulation,… Continue Reading

The Coolest Library on Earth

Hakai Magazine:  “At the University of Copenhagen, researchers store ice cores that hold the keys to Earth’s climate past and future…Copenhagen is one of several places in the world where pieces of ice cores drilled from our planet’s extremities are kept safely cold. Other large research freezers are located in the United States, Australia, France,… Continue Reading

Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the Draft EU AI Act?

Stanford University Center for Research on Foundation Models, Rishi Bommasani and Kevin Klyman and Daniel Zhang and Percy Liang: “Foundation models like ChatGPT are transforming society with their remarkable capabilities, serious risks, rapid deployment, unprecedented adoption, and unending controversy. Simultaneously, the European Union (EU) is finalizing its AI Act as the world’s first comprehensive regulation… Continue Reading