EU chief to invite top AI labs after hacks

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday that the European Union will invite the world's largest AI labs for talks on supporting industry efforts to “pace the frontier”, after incidents involving AI systems operating outside human supervision.

Speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, von der Leyen said “the dangers of self-improving models are becoming ever more apparent” and cited cases of AI agents escaping their environment or inserting malicious code.

The comments followed an incident in which OpenAI technology operating outside human supervision hacked into Hugging Face, a repository of AI models. Similar incidents since July have increased calls to pause or slow AI development.

Von der Leyen said the EU would work with partners including Canada and the United Kingdom, and said Europe's AI Act put the bloc in a position to help shape global regulation. She also said Europe needed its own AI capabilities, including to protect national security, as it seeks to compete with China and the United States.