"I do hope that we can find political agreements later this year, so that it [the regulations] can come into effect," she said in an interview with Japanese newspaper Nikkei Asia.
Vestager noted that the European officials intend to impose an obligation to label photos, videos and songs made with AI. This should become a preventive mechanism for the use of AI by commercial companies "when there is a risk of discrimination because of your gender, because of where you live, because of your age," as could happen if mortgage or insurance applications are involved, she added.
Vestager emphasized that the proposed regulations would not affect research in the field. The EU had been preparing regulations for the use of AI before such advanced instruments as ChatGPT emerged, and the existing drafts could be adjusted to include generative AI as well, she said.
In mid April, German authors' associations and trade unions urged the EU to strengthen AI regulations due to concerns over copyright infringement by ChatGPT.
ChatGPT gained popularity after its launch in November 2022, acquiring its first million users in less than a week. In late January, Microsoft said it would invest "billions of dollars" in OpenAI. Earlier in March, OpenAI introduced a new multimodal AI model, GPT-4, which is capable of recognizing both text and images, as well as solving complex problems with greater accuracy.