BRUSSELS, Dec 7 (Reuters) - EU lawmakers halted talks on the bloc's landmark Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act on Thursday, agreeing to resume discussions on Friday after they failed to reach a deal during almost 24 hours of negotiations.
The tense three-way debate between European Union member states, the European Commission and the European parliament will now extend into a third day, after weary lawmakers agreed to stop for a rest.
"We are exhausted. We cannot go on like that. We need to sleep so we can reassess the texts," said person present at the talks, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
With upcoming elections threatening to derail more than two years' work on the AI Act, negotiators worked through the night in the hope of reaching a consensus on key issues including the regulation of generative AI systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT.
"Lots of progress made over the past 22 hours on the AI Act," European competition chief Thierry Breton posted on social media platform X. "Resuming work with EU Parliament and Council tomorrow at 9:00 AM. Stay tuned!"
Lawmakers had agreed provisional terms for regulating AI systems like ChatGPT early on Thursday, sources said, taking a step closer to clinching rules governing the technology.
A document circulated among negotiators, which was seen by Reuters, showed the European Commission would maintain a list of AI models deemed to pose a "systemic risk", while providers of general-purpose AIs would have to publish detailed summaries of the content used to train them.