00:00Good morning. Great to have you with us.
00:02Yes, thank you.
00:02Look, the big news, of course, breaking this morning is happening in New Delhi.
00:06Tell us more about how this EU trade deal with India will impact our viewers.
00:11Of course, it's a very important deal from the European Union perspective,
00:15because together, European Union and India, we are two biggest democracies in the world.
00:20And I think this is great news for everybody.
00:22So more business opportunities for our SMEs, for our industries, also for our service providers.
00:27And, of course, also for the Indians, especially when it comes to technologies.
00:33We are working also together with India.
00:35We have our technology partnership also with India.
00:38And especially when we are looking at the talent part,
00:42we know that India is having very much ICT experts and talents,
00:46and we are really lacking workforce in Europe.
00:48So this is now certainly a field where we are working together with India,
00:52also to attract more talented ICT experts from India to work in Europe.
00:56OK, see if your work got out for you there.
00:59And now just talk to us about the investigation that you've launched this week
01:03against Elon Musk's controversial AI chat box, Grok.
01:06Tell us more about your findings here.
01:08We opened also formal investigation yesterday on this topic,
01:13especially now to investigate that how X has been assessing and mitigating the risks.
01:19So it's obligation under DSA that always the service providers,
01:24they have to assess and mitigate the systematic risks that they are posing.
01:28And now we see that Grok is now included more and more to X services.
01:31So it's really look that how the risks are taking care there.
01:36And also we saw also that there was certain illegal content that Grok was pushing.
01:43We know that now the future has been changed,
01:46but we are also now analysing about the other risks really related to Grok.
01:52And we saw that Grok AI generated about 3 million sexualised images in just two weeks.
01:57That's according to research.
01:59Can you keep up with this though?
02:01It came very late.
02:02We have very clear obligations for the online service providers
02:07that they have to all the time mitigate the risks, what they are posing,
02:11especially now when more and more AI is also integrated to online services.
02:16More and more AI is also running the recommender system of the online services.
02:22So this is certain obligation now for the online platforms
02:25to really look that they are having practices in place
02:28and illegal content, for example, is not spread online.
02:31And has X responded?
02:32Because we all know how Elon Musk feels about the European Union.
02:36Yes, they have been in dialogue with the Commission services.
02:38We already sent it earlier for them, request for information about this topic,
02:43that how they have been assessing the risks.
02:45And also we made before Christmas already the decisions
02:48that they have to now retain all the documents related to Grok and X.
02:53And now we opened also to formal proceedings.
02:56So they have been in dialogue with our services all these months.
02:59Okay. And how are you making sure that we can get it right here in the EU,
03:03that we can make sure that we have smart regulation when it comes to AI,
03:06but that we can also thrive?
03:07That is exactly what we are seeking in our regulation,
03:12that we want to have right balance.
03:14They're boosting innovations, but at the same time,
03:16it's also important to be aware of risks.
03:18And when it comes to new technologies also like to AI,
03:21so it's very important also that the developers,
03:24that they are also taking care of their responsibility here.
03:27And we have already AI Act, which is covering also the generative AI part.
03:33And the 26 AI developers, they were also signing code of practice together with us.
03:39So it means that they have to take care of the security,
03:41safety of the systems, and also they have to be transparent.
03:45They have to respect copyrights.
03:47So I see that we have good balance in the European Union
03:50when it comes to digital regulation.
03:52And how are you handling the pressure, though,
03:53coming from the US administration, trying to back you in a corner,
03:57trying to get you to kill the regulation?
03:59We know that these digital rules are very important for the Europeans
04:02because we want to make sure that our citizens can trust the technologies.
04:07We want to be sure that our digital environment is fair,
04:11transparent, democratic and safe.
04:15But you're seen as a rulemaker.
04:16You were just in Davos last week,
04:17everyone looking at you as the regulator, not the innovator.
04:20But there was good news on the 28th regime, right,
04:23to make it easier for startups here in the EU.
04:25In the same time, when we have certain digital rules,
04:28we want to make Europe faster and easier for the businesses.
04:32And we are doing that.
04:33So we are simplifying the processes and rules.
04:36We are creating better single market.
04:38We are boosting the capital markets to have also access to finance for the startups.
04:43So we are working on that.
04:44And we see that Europe is having everything what is needed to be competitive.
04:47Okay, Hena Verkunen, Vice-President of the European Commission.
04:51Thank you so much for coming into us here at Europe Today and being our guest.
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