I have mixed feelings about this. Banning these technologies and then putting a few exceptions for the government isn’t an ideal solution to this problem. It feels like a power-grab. If you really want to for example tackle mass-surveillance, remove many of the cameras and reduce centralized control so that the police actually have to go and physically request recordings. But they are not doing that.

I haven’t mentioned ChatGPT because this AI act seems to extend beyond just ChatGPT and as the article mentions also sets rules for facial recognition and other similarly problematic technologies.