By Foo Yun Chee and Supantha Mukherjee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -A code of practice designed to help thousands of companies comply with the European Union’s landmark artificial intelligence rules may only be issued at the end of 2025, the European Commission said on Thursday, potentially marking a delay of more than six months.
Alphabet’s Google, Meta Platforms, European companies such as Mistral and ASML as well as several EU governments have called for a delay in implementing the Artificial Intelligence Act, partly due to the lack of a code of practice.
Publication of the Code of Practice for large language models (GPAI) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and similar models launched by Google and Mistral had originally been planned for May 2.
“On the AI Act’s GPAI rules, the European AI Board is discussing the timing to implement the Code of Practice, with the end of 2025 being considered,” a Commission spokesperson said.
Signing up to the code is voluntary but companies who decline to do so, as some Big Tech firms have indicated, will not benefit from the legal certainty provided to a signatory.
The Commission pushed back against calls for a delay in rolling out the AI rules.
“Our commitment to the goals of the AI Act, such as establishing harmonised risk-based rules across the EU and ensuring the safety of AI systems in the European market, remains unchanged,” the spokesperson said.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
