Did you think of sending your assistant to an online meeting with the European Commission?

If he is “artificial intelligence agent” think again, Politico reports

European Union Executive Body has a new basic rule that prohibits virtual assistants operating with artificial intelligence to participate in its meetings. It imposed the rule for the first time on a teleconference with representatives from a network of digital policy support offices across Europe earlier this month.

‘AI agents are not allowed’he said a transparency of the etiquette of electronic meetings at the beginning of the presentation.

The Commission acknowledged that it has imposed the basic rule for the first time last week, refusing to give more details on politics and the reasons why it made the decision.

It is a reversal of a recent development in artificial intelligence technology: the rise of these “AI agents”.

The most popular AI application so far seems to be chatbots like Chatgpt of Openai, which can create text or information or perform a single job when requested by a human being. But artificial intelligence agents go beyond this limit: they are assistants who can deal with many work autonomously and interact with a virtual environment. Act on behalf of users to perform a series of tasks by helping them at work or their daily lives.

One of these tasks is to participate in an online meeting, the notes, or even the recitation of certain information.

Brussels are preparing for a time in which artificial intelligence agents are involved in everyday life and businesses.

The controversial technology referred to a broader package of the committee for virtual worlds published on March 31st. “AI agents are software applications designed to perceive and interact with the virtual environment,” He writes the text. Agents can “operate autonomously”, but their work is defined by “specific predetermined rules”.

The leading artificial intelligence companies have all experimented with their own artificial intelligence agents. In January, Openai released the operator, a research version of an AI agent who can perform many tasks in a separate web browser. Microsoft has also developed the ability to create agents on the AI ​​Copilot platform integrated into Windows. The French artificial intelligence company Mistral also offers a platform for the construction of agents.

So far, technology is not covered by any specific legislation, but the artificial intelligence models with which agents operate they should comply with the EU law on artificial intelligence.