The EU publishes the first draft of regulatory guidance for general purpose AI models

On Thursday, the European Union published its first draft of a Code of Practice for general purpose AI (GPAI) models. The document, which won’t be finalized until May, lays out guidelines for managing risks — and giving companies a blueprint to comply and avoid hefty penalties. The EU’s AI Act came into force on August 1, but it left room to nail down the specifics of GPAI regulations down the road. This draft (via TechCrunch) is the first attempt to clarify what’s expected of those more advanced models, giving stakeholders time to submit feedback and refine them before they kick in.

GPAIs are those trained with a total computing power of over 10²⁵ FLOPs. Companies expected to fall under the EU’s guidelines include OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic and Mistral. But that list could grow.

The document addresses several core areas for GPAI makers: transparency, copyright compliance, risk assessment and technical / governance risk mitigation. This 36-page draft covers a lot of ground (and will likely balloon much more before it’s finalized), but several highlights stand out.

The code emphasizes transparency in AI development and requires AI companies to provide …read more