The future of EU’s AI Act being secure by now, even if in the nick of time, now is the moment to, solemnly, assess where it stands, particularly in relation to personal data protection. The relationship of AI with data protection is a tense one by definition, AI being essentially expansive while data protection restrictive: AI increases exponentially data processing, and is itself nurtured by it, while data protection places rules and limitations to, frequently, these same processing operations. The fact that both the AI Act and the GDPR aim at ubiquitousness, means that they are bound to affect each and every field of our lives, further complicates things. Conflict is inevitable - the point in question in this panel being how well the newly finalised AI Act is equipped to deal with it, and under which priorities.
