Mr. Ryan Meade:

I did not mention in our opening statement that our CEO said several years ago that he considers AI too important not to regulate. Therefore, we have been very supportive of the effort to regulate in this area. We broadly welcome where the AI Act has landed regarding the risk-based approach. As you look through the Act, you will see there is a lot to do, including in respect of many self-regulatory and co-regulatory codes of practice, guidelines and so on. We are very much in an evolving space now, so it would be very hard to give a specific answer on this change or that change but I can say that the AI Act will clearly guide our approach. Our approach has been principally guided by our AI principles, which we adopted in 2018. We report on progress against those principles every year, so one can see the decisions we have taken against different products, how to approach them, areas that we will not pursue and so on. The current process involves refining that approach in line with the existing regulatory environment, engaging with regulators and others to determine where the risk factors lie, and coming to a position that is in line with the regulation.

The framework, which entails applying different obligations to different risk profiles, is sensible, but there may be some discussion on what involves a high risk and what does not. We already have several practices that we have not and will not pursue because we believe they should not be pursued, but some that could end up ruled out by the AI Act may have socially beneficial uses. I am thinking in particular about the use of AI in the detection of illegal content, including child sexual abuse material. Therefore, there are some tricky areas that still need to be worked out, but we are on a very positive trajectory to align what companies have been doing based on their own principles with a more universally shared regulatory framework.