Blog

The European Commission has pledged to “launch a call for expression of interest inviting European companies to share their AI models and systems” with more than 250 digital innovation hubs situated across the EU, with a view to those hubs – now refocused as ‘experience centres for AI’ – promoting “their wide-scale deployment across European strategic sectors”.

The measure is one of a series of new actions that the European Commission has committed to support EU-wide development and deployment of AI, in pursuit of improved productivity and growth. It wants businesses to adopt an ‘AI first’ approach to solving everyday problems but said that just 13.5% of EU businesses use AI currently.

The actions are set out in two new AI strategies the Commission published on Wednesday.

The first strategy, the ‘apply AI’ strategy, includes sector-specific commitments for industries such as health, manufacturing, defence and energy, as well as pledges with cross-sector relevance.

General actions include measures to support compliance with the EU AI Act by default and by design, in respect of relevant AI models and AI systems.

In this regard, the Commission has set up a new AI Act Service Desk, which it said businesses can use to “access all relevant information about the AI Act, navigate its content, understand how it applies and get tailormade answers to any question related to its implementation”. Businesses will also be able to use the hub to check “whether they are subject to legal obligations and understand the steps they need to take to comply”.

The Commission said it will “work with priority” on developing new AI Act-related guidelines too. Those guidelines will concern the classification of AI systems as ‘high-risk’ – something the Commission consulted on earlier this year – as well as guidelines on the AI Act’s interplay with other EU law, with specific focus on sectoral legislation. It said it will also push EU member states that have not already done so, to establish “the responsible national competent authorities” they are supposed to, to support “successful implementation of the AI Act”.

The Commission’s new strategies contained no announcement in relation to whether it will delay the implementation of certain AI Act provisions, amidst calls on it from industry and other policymakers globally to do so. Only some of the chapters have taken effect so far – prohibitions on certain types and uses of AI began applying in February, while rules impacting providers of so-called ‘general purpose AI models’ came into effect on 2 August. Rules applicable to ‘high-risk’ AI systems do not come into effect until August next year as plans stand right now.

Other general actions include a series of measures to bolster AI literacy within the EU workforce, funding for “targeted research on next-generation AI agents”, as well as plans to support the development of next-generation AI – so-called ‘frontier AI’ – in the EU.

“Building on its assets – world-class computing infrastructure, excellent scientific talent, a distinctive approach with a clear emphasis on open source and safety, the Commission will launch and coordinate a frontier AI initiative to accelerate progress in frontier AI capabilities in Europe by bringing together Europe’s leading industrial and academic actors and supporting strategic efforts,” the Commission said. “This initiative will focus on unlocking advanced capabilities through cutting-edge AI architectures and high-quality data, leveraging the computing capacity offered by the AI factories and gigafactories.”

“To foster the collaboration, the community will be brought together through a call for expressions of interest. The initiative will address ecosystem bottlenecks and downstream demand by Europe’s industry enhancing both competitiveness and sovereignty in frontier AI development. As part of this initiative the Commission will launch major EU-wide competitions to develop open frontier AI models that are major drivers of innovation. These projects will receive free access to EuroHPC supercomputers, and their open models will be made widely available to public authorities across Europe as well as to the European scientific and business communities,” it said.

Sector-specific actions planned by the Commission include those in the health sphere, where it said actions aimed at supporting AI-related medical devices to enter the EU market will be considered.

The Commission also intends to run an initiative that would provide some medical researchers with access to EU computing power to help them bring forward new medicines that “address unmet medical needs and treat diseases that have proven difficult to cure, such as Alzheimer’s disease or certain cancers”.

That plan chimes with a wider agenda the Commission set out in its second strategy paper, the ‘AI in science strategy’, in which it laid out plans to create a “virtual institute that pools excellent talent, compute, data and research funding for AI”. This is to be called Resource for AI Science in Europe (RAISE). Under the RAISE umbrella, it is envisaged that European scientists will “advance AI technologies and apply them to the toughest scientific and technological challenges” – including across specific scientific disciplines – and have access to EU funding, data and computing power.

The Commission said the RAISE initiative is essential to help the EU compete with countries like the US, China, Japan and UK on integrating AI into scientific work.

Another sector earmarked for AI-related support by the Commission is manufacturing. The Commission said it will fund “continuous support” for the “AI-powered manufacturing solutions” so that they “progress from the lab to a high level of maturity suitable for real-world applications”. It has also pledged to “facilitate data pooling across industrial actors through trusted third parties, to ensure a sufficient volume of training data, while preserving intellectual property and data security and making use, as relevant, of the data labs in AI factories”. More details on this are expected to be set out by the Commission in a separate data union strategy later this month.

In relation to mobility, the Commission plans to make use of the EU’s AI factories and gigafactories to “fast track the development of innovative AI models and common software platforms for automated driving and vehicle management systems”. This is in addition to pursuing joint venture arrangements that facilitate real-world testing of AI-enabled self-driving vehicles in EU cities.

In the area of defence, the Commission said it will incentivise “dual use open architecture solutions for border security and critical infrastructure protection” and deploy dedicated European computing power infrastructure “for training of defence and space AI models and development of AI defence and space applications”.

The Commission has also promised to undertake “a targeted study to explore the legal challenges related to AI-generated outputs and how cutting-edge technological safeguards and technologies, including AI, could be used to prevent and mitigate the risks of copyright infringing AI content being generated, including by detecting and removing such content”, among other measures relevant to the EU’s creative industries.

Further plans to support the use of AI for helping to balance the energy system, and to make AI tools more visible to public sector bodies to make use of, were also set out by the Commission.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said: “I want the future of AI to be made in Europe. Because when AI is used, we can find smarter, faster, and more affordable solutions. AI adoption needs to be widespread, and with these strategies, we will help speed up the process. Putting AI first also means putting safety first. We will drive this ‘AI first’ mindset across all our key sectors, from robotics to healthcare, energy and automotive.”