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Natali Helberger and Nicholas Diakopoulos have published an article titled “ChatGPT and the AI Act” in the Internet Policy Review. The article argues that the AI Act’s risk-based approach is not suitable for regulating generative AI due to two characteristics of such systems: their scale and broad context of use. These characteristics make it challenging to regulate them based on clear distinctions of risk and no-risk categories.
The article is relevant to us in the context of open source, general-purpose AI systems, and their potential regulation.
Helberger and Diakopoulos propose looking for inspiration in the Digital Services Act (DSA), which lays down obligations on mitigating systemic risks. A similar argument was made by Philipp Hacker, Andreas Engel, and Theresa List in their analysis.
Interestingly, the authors also point out that providers of generative AI models are currently making efforts to define risky or prohibited uses through contractual clauses. While they argue that “a complex system of private ordering could defy the broader purpose of the AI Act to promote legal certainty, foreseeability, and standardisation,” it is worth considering how regulation and private ordering (through RAIL licenses, which we previously analyzed) can contribute to the overall governance of these models.
