Regulating AI from Europe: a joint analysis of the AI Act and the Framework Convention on AI

Abstract

In Summer 2024 two European regulatory instruments in the context of the regulation of artificial intelligence were finalised almost simultaneously. The first was the well-known the EU Regulation laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (the so-called AI Act); the second the lesser known Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law. These regulatory instruments have some commonalities, such as their presentation as both ‘principle-based’ and ‘risk-based’. Yet there are also questions to be asked as to how these instruments will interact in practice. These questions are particularly pressing within the global context of the competition for (regulatory) leadership on AI. This article introduces the two new European instruments against this global backdrop and compares them across three central axes: the way in which they define ‘AI’, the way they deal with the idea of ‘risk-based’ regulation and the overall structure of the regulatory regimes they envisage.