The EU wants to put companies on the hook for harmful AI

The new bill, called the AI Liability Directive, will add teeth to the EU’s AI Act, which is set to become EU law around the same time. The AI Act would require extra checks for “high risk” uses of AI that have the most potential to harm people, including systems for policing, recruitment, or health care. 

The new liability bill would give people and companies the right to sue for damages after being harmed by an AI system. The goal is to hold developers, producers, and users of the technologies accountable, and require them to explain how their AI systems were built and trained. Tech companies that fail to follow the rules risk EU-wide class actions.

For example, job seekers who can prove that an AI system for screening résumés discriminated against them can ask a court to force the AI company to grant them access to information about the system so they can identify those responsible and find out what went wrong. Armed with this information, they can sue. 

The proposal still needs to snake its way through the EU’s legislative process, which will take a couple of years at least. It will be amended by members of the European Parliament and EU governments and will likely face intense lobbying from tech companies, which claim that such rules could have a “chilling” effect on innovation. 

In particular, the bill could have an adverse impact on software development, says Mathilde Adjutor, Europe’s policy manager for the tech lobbying group CCIA, which represents companies including Google, Amazon, and Uber.  

Under the new rules, “developers not only risk becoming liable for software bugs, but also for software’s potential impact on the mental health of users,” she says. 

Imogen Parker, associate director of policy at the Ada Lovelace Institute, an AI research institute, says the bill will shift power away from companies and back toward consumers—a correction she sees as particularly important given AI’s potential to discriminate. And the bill will ensure that when an AI system does cause harm, there’s a common way to seek compensation across the EU, says Thomas Boué, head of European policy for tech lobby BSA, whose members include Microsoft and IBM. 

However, some consumer rights organizations and activists say the proposals don’t go far enough and will set the bar too high for consumers who want to bring claims.