France’s Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot waded into a growing tussle between the European Union and Elon Musk’s Twitter on Monday, as he threatened the social media platform’s access to the bloc.
In comments made on radio network France Info, the minister said that the U.S. company would be banned from the EU if it refused to follow the incoming European Digital Services Act, which goes into effect throughout the EU at the end of August.
“Disinformation is one of the gravest threats weighing on our democracies,” said Barrot. “Twitter, if it repeatedly doesn’t follow our rules, will be banned from the EU,” the French minister added.
The remarks mark an escalation of an ongoing fight between European politicians and Twitter, which was bought last year by Elon Musk, the controversial billionaire who also controls Tesla and SpaceX.
Last week, POLITICO reported that the social media platform was withdrawing from the EU’s voluntary disinformation code of practice.
The code spells out obligations for large digital platforms on tracking political advertising, clamping down on disinformation, and encouraging wider access and participation to outsiders. Other major social media platforms have pledged to support the rulebook, which is meant to pre-empt some of the measures that will become mandatory under the incoming Digital Services Act. The regulation foresees fines worth up to 6 percent of a company’s annual revenue for rule-breakers.
Internal Markets Commissioner Thierry Breton tweeted “You can run but you can’t hide” in response to Twitter’s decision to withdraw from the code.
The CEO of OpenAI, the maker of the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, spent last week touring the Continent, stopping in Spain, France, Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom. He was at once talking AI regulation with policymakers — he met national leaders Pedro Sánchez, Emmanuel Macron, Mateusz Morawiecki, Olaf Scholz, and Rishi Sunak — and scouting locations for an OpenAI European office.
“We really need an office in Europe,” Altman told POLITICO at a Paris event Friday. “We also just really want one.” Under the European Union’s upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act, companies with EU-based users would need a presence in the bloc, with national “supervisory authorities” in charge of implementing the regulation. The eventual choice of its HQ location will, therefore, determine which member country will oversee it when it comes to enforcing the AI Act.
Since its launch in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT — a bot able to create texts such as songs, scripts, articles and software based on written prompts — has caused both optimism and anxiety about what the rise of AI means for the future of humankind. While some have marveled at the tool’s prowess in creating computer code and streamlining office work, others fear that it could be used to generate troves of automated disinformation, manipulative content and biased material — or even put millions of people out of a job.
Nevertheless, politicians appear eager to host the world’s hottest AI lab. Opening the event, French Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot read a ChatGPT-generated description of Altman (“innovative, influential, visionary”) before pitching France as a “great AI country” — rattling off a list that included talent, abundant nuclear energy (to power the computers underpinning the AI), and cultural heritage among its assets.
In the U.K., where Altman also briefed national security personnel, a person familiar with his conversation with Sunak, who was granted anonymity to talk of high-level meetings, described the British prime minister as “deferential.”
Altman is still deliberating on where to house the new office. “If you had to pick just based on the most AI research talent, you’d pick France,” he told POLITICO. “But I’ve been super-impressed by the talent and energy everywhere.” OpenAI already has staff working in London, according to LinkedIn, and in September 2022 it created a U.K. subsidiary, according to the country’s business registry.
In Paris, Altman strove to quash reports, from Reuters, that OpenAI might leave the EU if the AI Act proved too onerous. “We plan to comply. We want to offer services in Europe,” Altman told the Parisian audience. “We just want to make sure we’re technically able to. And the conversations have been super-productive this week,” he added.
First floated by the European Commission in 2021, the AI Act would ban some uses of AI uses (such as social scoring and some instances of facial recognition) and impose stricter rules related to safety and oversight when it comes to sensitive AI applications considered “high-risk.” On top of that, according to a version of the AI Act adopted earlier this month by lawmakers in the European Parliament, “generative” models such as ChatGPT — which can create new content, like text or photos — would have to disclose a summary of copyrighted materials used as training data.
The rule — which still needs to be agreed upon by representatives of the Commission and EU member countries — addresses worries from artists and publishers that AI firms might use their intellectual property without their consent or knowledge.
“That sounds like a great thing to ask for,” Altman told POLITICO. “But — due to the way these datasets are collected and the fact people have been copying data in different ways on different websites — to say I have to legally warrant every piece of copyrighted content in there is not as easy as it sounds.”
Altman thinks an easier way for creators to know if their work is being used would be based on whether their names appear in the prompts users give to an AI. “Every time you ask, ‘I want a song in the style of the Beatles,’ that would be clear,” Altman said.
Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the maker of the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
All in all, however, Altman struck an optimistic tone about the AI Act and said he’d be happy to meet EU policymakers — despite skipping a planned Brussels stop in his tour. He told POLITICO that OpenAI would join the EU’s first “sandbox,” based in Spain, where AI companies will be able to test their regulatory compliance.
“It’s going to get to a good place,” he said. “Regulatory clarity will be a good thing.”
European politicians said they were troubled by Twitter’s suspension of U.S. journalists from its platform but the move shows the limits of their planned new rules for online content and media freedom online.
France’s digital affairs minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he was “dismayed” about the direction Twitter was taking under Elon Musk after the platform removed nine U.S. journalists and other high-profile accounts in a seemingly arbitrary decision.
“Freedom of the press is the very foundation of democracy. To attack one is to attack the other,” Barrot tweeted.
European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová called the “arbitrary” removal of journalists worrying. French industry minister Roland Lescure announced he was temporarily quitting the platform in protest.
The Twitter ban for tech journalists from media organizations such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN appeared to come after they criticized the tech billionaire and self-proclaimed free speech advocate and wrote about the suspension of more than 20 accounts for sharing publicly available information about Musk’s private jet location.
“Talking a lot about #FreeSpeech, but stopping it as soon as one is criticized oneself: that’s a strange understanding of #FreedomOfExpression,” said Germany’s Justice Minister Marc Buschmann.
The German Foreign Affairs Ministry’s own Twitter account said press freedom should not “be switched on and off arbitrarily.”
Twitter has been mired in controversy since it was acquired by Musk in October and shed staff that worked on content moderation and policy affairs. The platform is now struggling to stem disinformation, potentially falling foul of commitments it took in June 2022. This week the company disbanded its board of experts advising the company on its content policy.
But restricting journalists’ access to a platform loved by the press risks a serious blow to media freedom and free speech. None of the banned journalists received an explanation of the social media platform’s decision. It was unclear if and when they would be allowed back on the platform. There had been calls to join alternatives such as Mastodon but links to it have reportedly been blocked on Twitter. The account for the open-source platform was also blocked.
Flying by EU rules?
In Brussels, politicians have pointed to the European Union’s legislative arsenal as a powerful tool to curb platforms’ power, with Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton insisting in October that Twitter’s bird logo “will fly by our rules” in the region.
Those laws or proposals aren’t yet ready for use and can’t yet counter Musk’s unilateral decisions for the platform he owns. The Commission is preparing to enforce the EU’s content law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), from summer 2023. The new Media Freedom Act is also being negotiated and may not become law until at least late 2024.
The DSA — and its ability to levy hefty fines — would require lengthy investigations by a Commission team that isn’t yet fully in place. The Media Freedom Act doesn’t specifically tackle an issue such as “deplatforming” or removing a person from a social network like Twitter.
The Commission’s Jourová warned Twitter about the possibility of future penalties under the DSA — up to 6 percent of a company’s global revenue if they restrict EU-based users and content in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner.
Twitter could also be sanctioned in the future if it doesn’t tell users why they have been sanctioned. Large online platforms with over 45 million users in the EU will have to assess and limit potential harms to freedom of expression and information as well as media freedom and pluralism.
“EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct,” she tweeted. “@elonmusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”
Politicians’ threats don’t reassure media and journalists’ organizations.
“The European legal arsenal is not sufficient to oppose acts of arbitrary censorship,” said Ricardo Gutierrez, general secretary of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ).
The draft Media Freedom Act largely aims at how Big Tech might treat news organizations. Very large online platforms would have to inform news outlets before they take down their content. It also foresees talks between media organizations and big social media to discuss content moderation problems.
Wouter Gekiere from the European Broadcasting Union in Brussels echoed similar worries saying public media services couldn’t see how the DSA could prevent takedowns of journalists’ accounts.
“The European Media Freedom Act would not do much more to protect the media online,” he said.” Journalists and editors need to have the ability to report on stories without fear of arbitrary platform controls.”
Laura Kayali and Mark Scott contributed reporting.
