Built-in AI functions disabled on European Parliament members' tablets

The European Parliament has deactivated the built-in artificial intelligence features on the tablets it provides to its members. This is according to an email sent to lawmakers, which was obtained by the Euractiv portal. The decision was made based on recommendations from cybersecurity and personal data protection teams.

According to the report, some features, such as writing assistants, summarization, and virtual assistants, use cloud services to process tasks that could be performed locally.

They are still assessing the extent of data shared with service providers and, until then, consider it safer to keep these features disabled. Third-party applications do not appear to be affected at this time.

It is unclear whether the block also applies to artificial intelligence features in applications. Parliament did not immediately respond to Euractiv's question.

The Directorate-General for Information has also recommended that MEPs consider similar measures on their private devices, restrict app permissions, and not expose work documents to AI tools.

The move comes amid discussions about Europe's dependence on foreign technology platforms and concerns about US authorities' access to data under the Cloud Act.

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