AI News Roundup: EU AI Legislation, Grok, Gemini and more

There’s a lot happening in the world of AI. To help you stay on top of the latest news, we have compiled a roundup of the developments we are following.

On Friday, lawmakers from the 27 member nations of the European Union agreed to key final aspects of the A.I. Act. The EU A.I. Act, which was passed in draft form in June 2023, “sets a new global benchmark for countries seeking to harness the potential benefits of [artificial intelligence-based applications], while trying to protect against its possible risks.” The risk-based approach set forth in the European bill seeks to mitigate potential human harms in areas such as attacks on infrastructure, job automation, online misinformation, and dangers to national security. Makers of AI technologies in such high-risk areas will need to conduct assessments before putting the tech into everyday use, akin to the drug approval process. Tech industry groups have pushed back, arguing that such regulations will discourage AI innovation.

Elon Musk’s xAI company has apparently launched Grok, its ChatGPT competitor. So far, Grok is only available to X (formerly Twitter) premium subscribers. In related news, Musk is attempting to raise $1 billion to fund xAI.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has submitted a comment to the U.S. Copyright Office setting forth concerns regarding unfair business practices facilitated by misuse of copyrighted materials. The FTC also states that generative AI tools have the potential to be used to violate consumer privacy while increasing discrimination and bias.

Google has launched a multi-modal generative AI model called Gemini, and is rolling it out as an upgrade to the company’s current large language model, Bard.