The EU AI Act and the Rights-based Approach to Technological Governance

Abstract

The EU AI Act constitutes an important development in shaping the Union's digital regulatory architecture. The Act places fundamental rights at the heart of a risk-based governance framework. The article examines how the AI Act institutionalises a human-centric approach to AI and how the AI Act's provisions explicitly and implicitly embed the protection of rights enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. It argues that fundamental rights function not merely as aspirational goals, but as legal thresholds and procedural triggers across the lifecycle of an AI system. The analysis suggests that the AI Act has the potential to serve as a model for rights-preserving AI systems, while acknowledging that challenges will emerge at the level of implementation.

References in corpus (3)

• Conformity Assessments and Post-market Monitoring: A Guide to the Role of Auditing in the Proposed European AI Regulation
• Unlocking the Black Box: Analysing the EU Artificial Intelligence Act's Framework for Explainability in AI
• The Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment (FRIA) in the AI Act: Roots, legal obligations and key elements for a model template