EU legislators fail to clinch deal to delay AI law

BRUSSELS — European Union legislators failed to agree on a rollback of the bloc’s artificial intelligence rules in negotiations overnight Tuesday, with rules for machinery and medical devices as the main sticking point.

Teams representing the European Parliament and EU countries parted ways after hours-long talks into Wednesday morning — failing to reach a deal that would delay a key part of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act until December 2027 and ban AI nudification apps.

The negotiators agreed to postpone the talks for now, according to three officials and two EU diplomats.

The abandonment significantly tightens the timeline to avoid legal uncertainty, since new rules for high-risk AI applications are set to kick in this August. EU legislators had rushed to meet an informal end-of-April deadline to agree on delaying those rules.

The talks derailed over a request by the center-right in Parliament, backed by Germany, to allow key products, such as machinery and medical devices, to comply with AI requirements under sectoral law rather than the AI Act.

German top officials, including Chancellor Friedrich Merz, are pushing for less strict rules for industrial AI, in a bid to give engineering firms such as Siemens and Bosch a boost.

But the proposal is strongly opposed by several EU countries and by the center-left.

Talks are expected to resume, with no date for that yet scheduled.