Abstract
This paper examines the impact of the European Union”s Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) and Data Act (DA) on digital farming technologies, focusing on their legal and regulatory implications. First, the paper delves into the AIA risk categorisation, highlighting how various digital farming AI systems may be categorised based on factors such as their type, function, capability and size, as well as the potential risks they pose to health, safety, and fundamental rights. It identifies two legal shortcomings concerning manipulation and interactive AI systems. Second, the paper assesses the provisions of the DA, focusing on the potential of the legislation to support farmers in accessing their data, breaking platform lock-ins, and ensuring transparency on how their data is used.
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Notes
- 1.
On 12 July 2024, the AI Act was officially published: Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 laying down harmonised rules on Artificial Intelligence.
- 2.
Regulation (EU) No 167/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 February 2013 on the approval and market surveillance of agricultural and forestry vehicles (OJ L 60, 2.3.2013).
- 3.
The definition of GPAI model is provided in Article 3 (63): ‘general-purpose AI model’ means an AI model, including where such an AI model is trained with a large amount of data using self-supervision at scale, that displays significant generality and is capable of competently performing a wide range of distinct tasks regardless of the way the model is placed on the market and that can be integrated into a variety of downstream systems or applications, except AI models that are used for research, development or prototyping activities before they are placed on the market’.
- 4.
- 5.
Information available at: <https://www.cropib.com/storage/app/media/uploaded-files/Plenary_Juergen_Mueller_-_BASF.pdf>.
- 6.
Read in conjunction with Article 51 (2), ‘A general-purpose AI model shall be presumed to have high impact capabilities pursuant to paragraph 1, point (a), when the cumulative amount of computation used for its training measured in floating point operations is greater than 1025’.
- 7.
Annex XIII, point (f): ‘[...] high impact on the internal market due to its reach, which shall be presumed when it has been made available to at least 10,000 registered business users established in the Union’.
- 8.
The transparency and copyright obligations for all providers of GPAI models are set in Article 53.
- 9.
Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market and amending Council Directive 84/450/EEC, Directives 97/7/EC, 98/27/EC, and 2002/65/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, and Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council (‘Unfair Commercial Practices Directive’).
- 10.
Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2023 on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data and amending Regulation (EU) 2017/2394 and Directive (EU) 2020/1828 (Data Act).
- 11.
European Commission (2020) Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions A European strategy for data. Brussels, 19.2.2020 COM(2020) 66 final.
- 12.
The sharing obligation does not apply to data generated through the use of connected products manufactured or designed by a microenterprise or a small enterprise (Article 7).
- 13.
Case Haff Poultry v Tyson et al. (2017) Class Action Complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, Case No. 17-CV-033-SPS.
- 14.
The case was settled in 2021, see: United States District Court Eastern District of Oklahoma, MDL No. 6:20-2977-RJS-CMR.
- 15.
European Commission (2021), Common European Data Spaces for Agriculture and Mobility. Event report, Publication 13 December 2021.
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I would like to thank the reviewers for their time and effort in reviewing the paper. All their comments have been carefully considered. Due to space constraints, some comments, such as broadening the scope of analysis to include the US and Asia, will serve as foundation for future research.
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Ramon Ciutat, L. (2025). The Impact of the EU’s AI Act and Data Act on Digital Farming Technologies. In: Santos, M.F., Machado, J., Novais, P., Cortez, P., Moreira, P.M. (eds) Progress in Artificial Intelligence. EPIA 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14967. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-73497-7_18
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