Civil service commission

• Parliament on Wednesday approved the provisional political agreement with Council on updated rules on the composition, name, labelling and presentation of certain 'breakfast' foodstuffs, the so-called “breakfast directives”, with 603 votes in favour, 9 against and 10 abstentions.
• There will also be clearer labelling on sugar content in fruit juices as well as for minimum fruit content in jams and marmalades.
• You can read more about the new rules in the press release after the deal with EU countries.
• These initiatives will ensure that consumers are better informed and that both beekeepers and consumers are better protected against adulterated honey."

• 2024 LUX European Audience Film Award: press conference with the winner
  A press conference with a representative of the 2024 LUX Award winner will take place on Tuesday, after the announcement at the award ceremony.
• When: 16 April at 19.15 CET
  Where: Parliament’s Anna Politkovskaya press conference room in Brussels (SPAAK 0A50)
  Participants: representative of the winning film, EP Vice-President Evelyn Regner (S&D, AT) and Honorary President of the LUX European Audience Film Award and Chair of the European Film Academy, Mike Downey
  How: Accredited media representatives can attend the press conference physically.
• Journalists who have never used Interactio before are asked to connect 30 minutes before the start of the press conference to perform a connection test.
• The award ceremony
  The ceremony will start at 18.00 in the Hemicycle of the European Parliament in Brussels.

• Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industry’s approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards?
• In practice, this means that AI chatbots often censor output when dealing with issues the companies deem controversial.
• Without a solid culture of free speech, the companies producing generative AI tools are likely to continue to face backlash in these increasingly polarized times.

Vague and broad use policies

• Companies issue policies to set the rules for how people can use their models.
• With international human rights law as a benchmark, we found that companies’ misinformation and hate speech policies are too vague and expansive.
• Our analysis found that companies’ hate speech policies contain extremely broad prohibitions.
• To show how vague and broad use policies can affect users, we tested a range of prompts on controversial topics.
• More recently, India confronted Google after Gemini noted that some experts consider the policies of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to be fascist.

Free speech culture

• If they serve a global audience, they may want to avoid content that is offensive in any region.
• This means society has an interest in ensuring such policies adequately protect free speech.
• Even where a similar legal obligation does not apply to AI providers, we believe that the companies’ influence should require them to adopt a free speech culture.
• At least two of the companies we focused on – Google and Anthropic – have recognized as much.

Outright refusals

• Therefore, users’ exposure to hate speech and misinformation from generative AI will typically be limited unless they specifically seek it.
• This is unlike social media, where people have much less control over their own feeds.
• Stricter controls, including on AI-generated content, may be justified at the level of social media since they distribute content publicly.
• Refusals to generate content not only affect fundamental rights to free speech and access to information.

• The Future of Free Speech is a non-partisan, independent think tank that has received limited financial support from Google for specific projects.
• In all cases, The Future of Free Speech retains full independence and final authority for its work, including research pursuits, methodology, analysis, conclusions, and presentation.
• The Future of Free Speech is a non-partisan, independent think tank that has received limited financial support from Google for specific projects.