The European AI Act and How It Matters for Research into AI in Media and Journalism

The protection of fundamental rights, and the human-centric, ethical and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in general is a central ambition of the European AI strategy, with no lesser goal than “spearhead[ing] the development of new ambitious global norms” (European Commission 2021). Like the General Data Protection Regulation before it, the draft AI Act can be expected to set a new tone for the debate around ‘responsible AI’ both within and beyond Europe. It is one of the first attempts worldwide to cut through an increasingly opaque jungle of private and public ethical guidelines in order to formulate binding regulatory standards for what exactly responsible and human-centric AI must mean.
The draft AI Act is relevant not only to potential producers and users of AI, but also to a growing community of scholars that is interested in the normative implications of AI and wants to find ways to make the notion of ‘responsible use’ of AI meaningful. Scholars have an important role to play in informing the emerging policies around AI with their insights, as well as studying the consequences once policies are adopted. As such, the primary goal of this commentary is to explore the relevancy of the draft AI Act for media and journalism, as well as to stimulate the community of media scholars to engage further with the potential implications of the regulation.