The challenge of defining artificial intelligence in the EU AI Act

The EU Commission, the EU Council and the EU Parliament have each issued their own versions of the text of a new EU AI Act. Throughout the gestation of the EU AI Act a core and complex question has arisen: how should ‘AI system’ be defined in the EU AI Act? This paper examines the evolution of the definition of ‘AI system’ in the draft EU AI Act. This paper suggests that, in order to achieve the EU’s goals, a definition of ‘AI system’ which is clear and cannot be modified outside the EU legislative process, which is sufficiently broad to accommodate future technological developments and which focuses on systems which make predictions, recommendations and decisions would appear to be both the most practical and the most appropriate.