DP News – Week 25. NIST launches a public working group, the Irish commercial court grants an extension of an interim stay on a decision against Meta, a provisional agreement on the Data Act is reached.

As the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reports, it is launching a new public working group on Generative AI. According to the official press-release, the Working Group “will help address the opportunities and challenges associated with AI that can generate content, such as code, text, images, videos and music. The public working group will also help NIST develop key guidance to help organizations address the special risks associated with generative AI technologies. The public working group will draw upon volunteers, with technical experts from the private and public sectors”.

As regards the goals of the working group, there are short-term, midterm and long-term goals specified. “Initially, it will serve as a vehicle for gathering input on guidance that describes how the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) may be used to support development of generative AI technologies. In the midterm, the working group will support NIST’s work on testing, evaluation and measurement related to generative AI. Longer term, the group will explore specific opportunities to increase the likelihood that powerful generative AI technologies are productively used to address top challenges of our time in areas such as health, the environment and climate change. The group can help ensure that risks are addressed and managed before, during and after AI applications are developed and used”.

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Irish Commercial Court (a division of the High Court which deals solely with significant commercial cases) “grants an extension of an interim stay on a decision [against Meta] that it must suspend the transfer and storage of user data from Europe to the United States”, Irish Times report. The stay will remain in place until the end of July. The extension was granted in connection with the DPC’s information that next month, the European Commission may decide on whether or not ‘adequacy’ status will be given to the U.S. jurisdiction. If positive, this will solve the issue raised in this decision as such.

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Council of the EU and the European Parliament reached a provisional agreement “on a new regulation on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data (data act)”, official press release reports. “The regulation proposes new rules on who can access and use data generated in the EU across all economic sectors. The new legislation also aims to ease the switching of providers of data processing services, puts in place safeguards against unlawful data transfer by cloud service providers and provides for the development of interoperability standards for data to be reused between sectors”.