Spain To Impose Massive Fines For Not Labeling AI-Generated Content

Spain's government has approved legislation imposing substantial fines of up to 35 million euros or 7% of global turnover on companies that fail to clearly label AI-generated content. Reuters reports: The bill adopts guidelines from the European Union's landmark AI Act imposing strict transparency obligations on AI systems deemed to be high-risk, Digital Transformation Minister Oscar Lopez told reporters. "AI is a very powerful tool that can be used to improve our lives ... or to spread misinformation and attack democracy," he said. Spain is among the first EU countries to implement the bloc's rules, considered more comprehensive than the United States' system that largely relies on voluntary compliance and a patchwork of state regulations. Lopez added that everyone was susceptible to "deepfake" attacks - a term for videos, photographs or audios that have been edited or generated through AI algorithms but are presented as real. [...]

The bill also bans other practices, such as the use of subliminal techniques - sounds and images that are imperceptible - to manipulate vulnerable groups. Lopez cited chatbots inciting people with addictions to gamble or toys encouraging children to perform dangerous challenges as examples. It would also prevent organizations from classifying people through their biometric data using AI, rating them based on their behavior or personal traits to grant them access to benefits or assess their risk of committing a crime. However, authorities would still be allowed to use real-time biometric surveillance in public spaces for national security reasons.

How long?

[Retired Chemist]

How long before everything on the internet is marked "may contain AI content"? It is like the peanut warnings on candy. There is almost no chance of the product having any peanut contamination, but the lawyers want to be safe, if anyone ever sues. It makes no difference if the suit has any justification or not. The internet is full of second and third and tenth hand stuff and who will be able to tell if contains AI created material or not and what does AI created even mean exactly.\?

Re:How long?

[Local ID10T]

Prop 65 Warning: Everything causes Cancer -but only in California!

(If you lived in California, you would get the joke...)

This reply is gluten-free

[LinuxRulz]

Or we go the other way and assume everything is from gen-AI unless marked otherwise. As long as there is a way to enforce this it doesn't matter which way it goes.

Re:

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts [amazon.com]

Ingredients: Peanuts, salt. Contains: Peanuts: WARNING: May contain peanuts.

Re:How long?

[mjwx]

Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts [amazon.com] Ingredients: Peanuts, salt. Contains: Peanuts: WARNING: May contain peanuts.

The irony here is that this is due to your overly litigious society, not government regulation.

Re:

[test321]

First or second result from the search, for example https://www.amazon.com/Planter... [amazon.com] One of the picture of the product description is a warning https://m.media-amazon.com/ima... [media-amazon.com] that reads: "INGREDIENTS: PEANUTS, SEA SALT. CONTAINS: PEANUT. MANUFACTURED ON EQUIPMENT THAT PROCESSES TREE NUTS."

Re:

[TwistedGreen]

What if I'm allergic to salt, you insensitive clod!

Re:

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

Then you die.

Re:

[locofungus]

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Planters%20Dry%20Roasted%20Peanuts

Ingredients: Peanuts, salt. Contains: Peanuts: WARNING: May contain peanuts.

And yet I when I follow your link and actually check it's not even:
"May Contain: Nuts" which I expected and can understand might confuse, it's "May Contain: Tree Nuts" and "Manufactured on equipment that processes tree nuts"

You clearly aren't aware that, despite their name, Peanuts are not a nut, they're a legume. There are plenty of people who have a dangerous nut allergy

Re:

[allo]

This would at least end the "This is made by AI!" witch hunts, if everybody has to say "Right, It may contain AI"

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

It's yet another reason not to start a tech company in Europe.

EU governments pile on the regulations and fines, then wonder why the innovation happens elsewhere.

Second Hand AI

[alvinrod]

What does it really matter when regular people repost AI content without any of the markings? People still regularly post "news" from the Onion or similar sites without realizing that it's satire. We're all going to be breathing second hand AI content because it's so easy to spew out and some sizeable percentage of human generated content is functionally identical to it anyways.

Re:

[test321]

People still regularly post "news" from the Onion or similar sites without realizing that it's satire.

Precisely because there is no such law about satire, so The Onion does not visibly acknowledge its true nature (there is one item in the FAQ that uses the word "satire" but it's not on frontpage, it's not in About Us, you pretty much need to know you're looking for it to find it). If The Onion would pre-prend its page titles were pre-pended "[Satire]" that would solve it. They can even use transparent letters size 0.1pt so to not compromise their appearance; that would at least guarantee that it is quoted a

Business plan:

[greytree]

Spain is going to need a way of checking all this content to see if it was made by an AI.

And I will provide a service to do just that.

It will use ...

people. Who do you think I am?!

Re:Business plan:

[test321]

They don't have to check systematically, the same way that prohibiting speeding does not mean the police must take measure to check every single car on every road at every moment. It will be based on incident report from the public, followed by investigation. In many cases it isn't hard to determine if a given video published on social media is fake.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah but if you outlaw speeding then only outlaws will speed!

Re:

[allo]

Law enforcement doesn't have to be perfect. It's less about "We need to be able to prove all AI!" but more about "We proved it's unlabeled AI and need a law to sentence you for that"

What about fake influencers?

[thesjaakspoiler]

Can we fine those as well in Spain with their meaningless 'content'?

Re:

[sanf780]

For a brief moment, I thought you were going to mention AI influencers like Aitana Lopez [euronews.com]

Catch All statement

[jms00]

Any platform hosting user-uploaded content should just tag everything as AI-generated by default. Then, include a disclaimer along the lines of: âoeAny content you see here could be AI-generated, AI-assisted, or even created by an AI using another AI. Rather than trying to sort it all out (and risk fines), weâ(TM)re just tagging everything as AI-generated. Enjoy!â Then tag the statement as âoeAI Generatedâ.

Re:

[billyswong]

Or a platform can require every image / video uploads to declare "is it drawn by AI" before submit. If the user aren't sure it isn't as one is copying from somewhere else, the user will then need to declare the source(s) of content.

In other words, the choices are "Yes', "No" and "I don't know. It is from ____"

Everything written with predictive text

[mkwan]

Did you post something on LinkedIn from your phone using a predictive-text keyboard? Did you accept any of the suggestions? Better label it as AI generated.

I feel sorry for Spanish businesses. Complying with these regulations will cost a fortune.

Let me translate that

[CEC-P]

Spain wants everyone to label their AI content so that when their politicians and giant corporations want to fake something, it looks more legitimate without the label.