Upon closing an inquiry related to general purpose AI models and energy consumption, European Ombudswoman Teresa Anjinho encouraged the European Commission to continue to improve technical solutions to better enable AI providers to estimate their models’ energy use and meet the objectives set out in the EU’s AI Act.

The Ombudswoman’s inquiry followed a complaint from a Member of the European Parliament who had raised concerns about possible discrepancies regarding energy consumption between the AI Act and guidelines meant to assist its implementation for general purpose AI models – the Code of Practice.

In her findings, the Ombudswoman acknowledged that the Code of Practice is only a temporary measure for ensuring compliance with the AI Act. She stressed that the Commission has an obligation to regularly monitor and evaluate how the Code is performing and to encourage its review and adaptation if necessary. The Code may ultimately be replaced with targeted instruments such as harmonised standards.

Background

The AI Act requires providers of general purpose AI to keep up-to-date technical documentation about their models, including information about energy consumption. If a model’s provider lacks the information necessary to estimate energy consumption, the current Code of Practice enables them to explain which information they do not have. The Commission’s AI Office will then make its own assessment based on the explanations it receives from the model’s provider regarding the information they lack, as well as other data at its disposal.