A committee of the European Parliament has cleared a draft of the artificial intelligence (AI) law to be discussed and put to the vote at a forthcoming session. The final details may change before it is passed. The proposed Act will not only set standards for how AI is deployed within the European Union (EU), but also apply to any entity that serves EU residents in the same way as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Like the GDPR, as legislation serving the world’s largest economic bloc, the AI Act would set benchmarks for legislation elsewhere. Quite a few classes of AI tools that breach privacy or enable discrimination have been banned. In general, AI is to be classified in accordance with risk — from minimal to limited, high, and unacceptable. While many high-risk tools will not be banned, entities using these must be transparent and subject to stringent oversight and auditing.