Belgium
Senior EU Policy Reporter, Technology at Euronews.
Formerly with MLex and Politico in Brussels.
Outside the United States, Clearview AI's business model is under threat. Australia and Canada have forced the company to shutter its local operations; Italy and the United Kingdom have imposed fines; and a posse of European regulators has launched probes.
No agreement on the final shape of the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act is yet in sight, but businesses are starting to get an idea of how enforcement might look - and diverging approaches may give some cause for concern.
German companies see increased chances of not being publicly named in decisions by data regulators after a recent case where a court told the Federal Network Agency shouldn't have named a company that it fined to prevent reputational damage.
The growth of artificial intelligence in a wide range of business applications is likely to place another burden on European data protection authorities already struggling to enforce the EU's General Data Protection Regulation.
Restaurants and bars that have been ordered to keep registers with customers' personal data to track Covid-19 infections are being closely monitored by data-protection authorities in Germany, Belgium and the UK. Although the regulators' focus will be on advising businesses on their compliance with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, and no fines have been issued yet, they can carry out audits based on consumers' complaints.
As the EU marks the second anniversary of the General Data Protection Regulation - its strict data-protection rules - large US tech companies that have so far mainly avoided significant fines should prepare for closer regulatory enforcement in the months ahead.
Twoo, a Match Group-owned, Belgian-based platform, has been fined 50,000 euros in Belgium for breaching the EU's data-protection rules. Match Group operates several well-known dating applications including Tinder, Hinge and OKCupid. The national data-protection authority announced the fine yesterday without naming the company at fault, referring to it only as a "global social network."
Companies' direct-marketing practices have come under scrutiny in Finland to check their compliance with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, the country's deputy data-protection ombudsman has told MLex. "We investigate all the [data protection] complaints we receive. This means that we have many ongoing and parallel investigations right now.
EU telecom operators and tech companies expect the new European Commission, which took office in December, to put forward some of its digital plans in coming weeks, including rules on artificial intelligence. At the same time, they still await clarity on some of the outstanding files from the previous Juncker commission, which EU institutions and national governments were unable to find agreement on.
Scour a big tech company dabbling in artificial intelligence and chances are it already has an ethics guidelines document somewhere on the company server. The question looming before all manner of industries whose world artificial intelligence is positioned to permanently transform - is whether today's proliferating set of voluntary, non-binding ethics rules will become cold, hard law.
Huawei's battle for acceptance in Europe can be traced back to regulatory uncertainty in an unexpected place - its home market of China. The Chinese telecom company has already been barred from participating in the rollout of fifth-generation mobile Internet in the US and Australia due to cybersecurity fears.
Companies that transfer data between the US, EU and Japan could see a further alignment of the three data-protection regimes later this year, MLex has learned. Japan will set out plans for a "data security" pact between the three jurisdictions at its next summit with the EU, according to meeting documents seen by MLex.
Tech giants such as Amazon, Facebook and Google should be subject to updated competition rules that force them to share data and allow EU authorities to investigate their market dominant position, Mona Keijzer, the Dutch state secretary for economic affairs, told MLex.
When a scandal over politicians' side jobs forced one of Belgium's major parties from power, it shocked the country's political establishment. But the revelations came as no surprise to Christophe Van Gheluwe, a 41-year-old IT expert from Brussels.
A decade ago, when Ayaan Hirsi Ali was forced to leave her adopted homeland of the Netherlands, a former colleague by the name of Geert Wilders had just launched his own, far-right political party.
