Governing AI during a pandemic crisis: Initiatives at the EU level

After the outbreak of Covid-19, the European Commission (EC) promptly took the initiative to lead and coordinate a common European response. The actions unfolded in several directions, paving the way to the uptake of AI-related solutions and placing hope in these tools to face crises, namely of a public health and global nature. In this article, we focus on initiatives for the uptake of AI-related solutions from the experimental level towards implementation. The Repository of AI and Robotics solutions, launched in 2020, is an example of an initiative put forth to leverage and disseminate knowledge on AI, expanding the fields of application and fostering the development and adaptation of cutting-edge technologies to explore how they can assist in tackling specific tasks during a public health crisis. Using this database, the article outlines the promise of AI as a hope for handling specific needs and tasks and how the uptake of such technologies was accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic. In extension, we frame initiatives for the uptake of AI-enabled solutions from a governance perspective, focusing on the establishment of frameworks for ethical and trustworthy AI by defining principles and standards that aim to protect the underlying values deemed fundamental.