This week, Parliament endorsed the final Artificial Intelligence Act after over a year of difficult negotiations. As Renew’s negotiator in the Committee on Legal Affairs, I fought for fundamental rights and a better deal for open-source developers. We managed to exempt open-source artificial intelligence (AI) from the AI Act, giving developers and businesses room to build and innovate, and we banned the most harmful uses of AI: from intrusive emotional recognition and biometric categorisation to social scoring and predictive policing. In another major win for privacy, we partially banned Orwellian biometric mass surveillance, meaning law enforcement will need a warrant to use facial recognition and can only do so in cases of terrorism, serious crime or missing children. There are some other uses we would have liked to see banned, but unfortunately, we weren’t able to convince Member State governments. However, all these practices will be considered as high-risk, so they will have to follow strict rules. In particular, thanks to an effort pioneered by my colleagues and I in the Committee on Legal Affairs, people will have the right to an explanation for decisions that negatively affect them. Because of this, I voted for the AI Act. Unverified source (2024)