Governments are attempting to convince parliamentarians not to impose an outright ban on the use of artificial intelligence in military and security applications during the third day of deliberations on Friday over historic regulations controlling the use of AI by the European Union.

Tired After nearly a full day of debate, EU governments and parliamentarians reached a temporary agreement on Thursday on how to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT.

“We made major progress yesterday and the day before – let’s join forces for the last mile.”

The use of AI in biometric surveillance will be the main point of discussion and could determine whether Europe will take the lead in regulating the technology, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

EU lawmakers want to ban the use of AI in this area because of privacy concerns, but governments have pushed for an exception for national security, defence and military purposes.

The prolonged talks and divisions within the 27-member bloc illustrate the challenge facing governments around the world as they weigh the advantages of the technology, which can engage in human-like conversations, answer questions and write computer code, against the need to set guardrails to control its influence.