POSITION | DIGITALISATION AND INNOVATION | INDUSTRIAL AI
Risks to Europe’s Competitiveness within the General Purpose AI Code of Practice (CoP) 27 March 2025 General Remarks The AI Act aims to provide companies in Europe with a comprehensible and practical foundation for the use of AI in their processes. The General Purpose AI Code of Practice (CoP) strives to establish basic guidelines for providers of general-purpose AI when placing their products on the market under the AI Act. While we commend the EU Commission's intention, the current draft and approach of the CoP imposes highly demanding and costly reporting and compliance burdens on its affected parties. We believe that the CoP in its current form threatens to hinder innovation and investments in AI and does not provide adequate guidance for complying with the AI Act. Characteristics of General Purpose AI Model The third draft of the CoP strives to establish basic guidelines for providers of general-purpose AI models, while the definition of the term remains unclear. There is no explanation of the vague delimitation criteria of the legal definition, such as "significant generality", "wide range of distinct tasks", etc. Thus, there is great uncertainty of the scope of the entire CoP. This negatively affects in particular those model providers who are placing them on the market only as part of an AI-system with a typically limited intended purpose (e.g. a language-based control unit of a device). Fine-Tuning The Commission and the drafters of the CoP have declared their intent to limit the applicability of the obligations for providers of GPAI models with systemic risk (GPAISR) of the CoP to a small group of addresses excluding those that are merely fine-tuning these models. However, neither the EU Commission, nor the CoP, have yet provided any reliable guidance at which point fine-tuning an existing AI model – a widely practiced and economically significant method – would classify the fine-tuning company as a provider of a GPAI Model. Given the legal text of the AI Act and the existing logic of product safety regulation, it remains unclear how the limited scope will be guaranteed. If the extensive requirements for GPAISR in the third draft were to apply to companies fine-tuning GPAISR, the CoP would significantly undermine their international competitiveness. Therefore, the Commission or the drafters of the CoP must urgently find an innovation-preserving solution for the fine-tuning of GPAISR. In order to create legal certainty in the applying industry, fine-tuners must be removed from the obligations of the CoP if necessary and legally feasible.
Polina Khubbeeva | Digitalisation and Innovation | T: +49 30 2028-1586 | p.khubbeeva@bdi.eu | www.bdi.eu