Incoming parliament to work on AI liability rules, despite tech lobby concerns

The incoming European Parliament will continue work on a legal framework to determine who is liable in case of defaults in artificial intelligence products, now that the AI Act will take effect on 1 August. But the Brussels tech lobby and consumer organisations remain divided over the need for additional rules. 

The European Commission proposed the AI Liability Directive in 2022 in a bid to modernise existing liability rules with new provisions covering harms caused by AI systems to ensure uniformity of protection. 

The file didn't move forward within the Parliament during the last mandate: lawmakers decided to put it on hold until an agreement was reached on the AI Act - the main framework which regulates AI systems according to a risk-based approach.

The AI Act itself, the world’s first stringent rules to regulate high-risk machine learning systems, will officially enter into force next month. The general-purpose AI rules will apply one year after entry into force and the obligations for high-risk systems in three years' time.

The lawmaker in charge of steering the AI Liability Directive through Parliament is Axel Voss (Germany/EPP). Voss, re-elected in the June EU election, told Euronews that “it would be better to have an AI liability regime in place.” 

The tech lobby in Brussels worries however, that liability rules specific to AI will cause additional regulatory hurdles for companies. CCIA Europe, an organisation representing IT and telecom companies, said it is “strongly against adding unnecessary and burdensome rules on companies trying to compete in an already highly regulated market.”

They claim that the issues are already covered under the revamped Product Liability Directive (PLD): rules adopted in 2023 by the EU