European Union AI Act checker reveals Big Tech's compliance pitfalls

Some of the most prominent artificial intelligence (AI) models are falling short of European regulations in key areas such as cybersecurity resilience and discriminatory output, according to data seen by Reuters.

The European Union (EU) had long debated new AI regulations before OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in late 2022. The record-breaking popularity and ensuing public debate over the supposed existential risks of such models spurred lawmakers to draw up specific rules around "general-purpose" AIs.

Now, a new tool, which has been welcomed by EU officials, has tested generative AI models developed by big tech companies like Meta and OpenAI across dozens of categories, in line with the bloc's wide-sweeping AI Act, which is coming into effect in stages over the next two years.

Designed by Swiss startup LatticeFlow AI and its partners at two research institutes, ETH Zurich and Bulgaria's INSAIT, the framework awards AI models a score between 0 and 1 across dozens of categories, including technical robustness and safety.

A leaderboard published by LatticeFlow on Wednesday showed models developed by Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Mistral all received average scores of 0.75 or above.

However, the company's "Large Language Model (LLM) Checker" uncovered some models' shortcomings in key areas, spotlighting where companies may need to divert resources to ensure compliance.

For example, testing for "prompt hijacking," a type of cyberattack in which hackers disguise a malicious prompt as legitimate to extract sensitive information, the LLM Checker awarded Meta's "Llama 2 13B Chat" model a score of 0.42. French startup Mistral's "8x7B Instruct" model received 0.38 in the same category.

"Claude 3 Opus," a model developed by Google-backed Anthropic, received the highest average score, 0.89.

LatticeFlow said the LLM Checker would be freely available for developers to test their models' compliance online.

Petar Tsankov, the firm's CEO and cofounder, told Reuters the test results were positive overall and offered companies a roadmap for them to fine-tune their models in line with the AI Act.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said, "The Commission welcomes this study and AI model evaluation platform as a first step in translating the EU AI Act into technical requirements."

Companies failing to comply with the AI Act will face fines of 35 million euros ($38 million) or 7 percent of their global annual turnover.

(With input from Reuters)