Crucially, the term “general-purpose AI” (GPAI) did not emerge from within the AI research community. It is a legal construct introduced by the EU AI Act to retroactively define certain types of AI systems. Prior to this, ‘GPAI’ had little to no presence in scholarly discourse. The Act not only assigned a regulatory meaning to the term, but also effectively created a new category – one that risks distorting how such systems are actually understood and developed in practice.
Source: A False Confidence in the EU AI Act: Epistemic Gaps and Bureaucratic Traps | TechPolicy.Press