The Council of Europe Adopts a Convention on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law

              On September 5, 2024, the Council of Europe (CoE) opened for signature the Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law.[1] Given how hotly artificial intelligence (AI) has been discussed over the last several years, it should not come as a surprise that the CoE resolved to prepare a treaty on how AI should be compliant with its three principal areas of activity, namely human rights, democracy and the rule of law. After all, for many decades now CoE treaties have always been at the forefront of international legal developments (suffice to mention insider dealing, money laundering, financing of terrorism, and trafficking in human beings). The purpose of this short article is to offer an overview of the Convention, which in Article 2 defines AI systems as ‘a machine-based system that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations or decisions that may influence physical or virtual environments.’