The European Parliament passes the world’s first comprehensive AI law

The European Parliament passed the Artificial Intelligence Act on 13 March 2024, with 523 votes in favor, 46 against and 49 abstentions. It is the world’s first comprehensive legal framework for the technology and classifies systems by risk level, from banned uses — such as social scoring — to minimal-risk ones.

For journalism, two aspects are central. First, transparency obligations: image, audio or video content generated or manipulated by AI that appears authentic must be labeled as such. Second, providers of general-purpose models must publish summaries of the content used to train them and comply with EU copyright rules, a long-standing demand of news publishers.

The regulation entered into force on 1 August 2024 with staggered application: bans have applied since February 2025, rules for general-purpose models since August 2025, and most remaining obligations from August 2026.

Source: European Parliament.