European Commission appoints 13 experts to draft AI Code 

The European Commission has today announced the list of independent experts from the EU, US and Canada tasked to lead work on drafting a Code of Practice on General Purpose Artificial Intelligence, which includes language models such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini. 

The 13 experts set to lead four different workstreams that should lead to a Code of Practice under the AI Act by April 2025 were named in a statement from the executive.  

The EU’s AI Act, which entered into force last month – provides stringent rules for providers of GPAI models, which will become effective in August 2025. 

Under the rules, the AI Office – a unit within the Commission – is encouraged to draw up a Code designed to ease application of the AI Act’s rules for companies, including on transparency and copyright-related rules, systemic risk taxonomy, risk assessment, and mitigation measures. 

Experts had until 25 August to apply for the role and those selected include Rishi Bommasani (US), the Society Lead at the Stanford Center for Research on Models, Marietje Schaake (Netherlands), a former MEP and now fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centred AI, and Yoshua Bengio (Canada), known for his work in deep learning for which he received the 2018 A.M. Turing Award.

Today, some 1,000 attendees, including general-purpose AI model providers, downstream providers, industry, civil society, academia, and independent experts, will take part in the first online plenary to help develop the Code, the Commission said. 

Last week, three EU lawmakers – Axel Voss (Germany/EPP), Svenja Hahn (Germany/Renew) and Kim van Sparrentak (The Netherlands/Greens-EFL) – sent a question for written answer to the Commission asking for clarity about the appointment process.

They wanted to know how the EU executive is selecting chairs, and how they can deliver an adequate final Code, in light of the short timeline. The Commission has yet to provide an answer to those questions.