The European Parliament has approved new laws governing artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce risk and improve transparency in a rapidly growing industry that could have significant impacts on business and society.

The Artificial Intelligence Act aims to protect “fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability” from “high-risk” AI, the body said. It also includes limits on the use of biometric identification systems by law enforcement, bans on social scoring and the use of AI to exploit users.

Member states negotiated the wording of the Act in December 2023 – and MEPs broadly endorsed it – with 523 votes in favour, 46 against and 49 abstentions.

The new rules ban AI applications that “threaten citizens’ rights”, including biometric categorisation systems based on sensitive characteristics and untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases.

It also cracks down on emotion recognition in the workplace...