By Fanny Potkin, Sam Nussey and Supantha Mukherjee
SINGAPORE/TOKYO/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The European Union is&nbsp;lobbying&nbsp;Asian countries to follow its lead on artificial intelligence in adopting new rules for tech firms that include disclosure of copyrighted and&nbsp;AI-generated content, according to senior&nbsp;officials&nbsp;from the EU and&nbsp;Asia.
The EU and its member states have dispatched&nbsp;officials&nbsp;for talks on governing the use of&nbsp;AI&nbsp;with at least 10&nbsp;Asian countries including India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the Philippines, they said.
The bloc&nbsp;aims for its proposed&nbsp;AI&nbsp;Act to become a global benchmark on the booming technology the way its data protection laws have helped shape global privacy standards.&nbsp;
However, the effort to convince&nbsp;Asian governments of the need for stringent new rules is being met with a&nbsp;lukewarm&nbsp;reception, seven people close to the discussions told Reuters.
Many countries favour a "wait and see" approach or are leaning towards a more flexible regulatory regime.
The&nbsp;officials&nbsp;asked not be named as the discussions, whose extent has not been previously reported, remained confidential.
Singapore, one of&nbsp;Asia's leading tech centres, prefers to see how the technology evolves before adapting local regulations, an official for the city-state told Reuters.&nbsp;Officials&nbsp;from Singapore and the Philippines expressed concern that moving overly hasty regulation might stifle&nbsp;AI&nbsp;innovation.
As Reuters reported last month, Southeast&nbsp;Asian countries are drawing up voluntary guidelines. Japan, for its part, is leaning towards softer rules than the stringent approach championed by the EU, as it looks to the technology to boost economic growth and make it a leader in advanced chips.
Efforts in&nbsp;Asia&nbsp;are part of a global push by European nations that include&nbsp;talks with countries such as Canada, Turkey and Israel, Dutch digital minister Alexandra van Huffelen told Reuters in an interview.
"We're trying to figure out on how we can make the regulation from the EU copied, applicable and mirrored ... as it is with the GDPR," van Huffelen said late last month, referring to General Data Protection Regulation, the&nbsp;EU's&nbsp;data privacy regime.
The emergence of&nbsp;AI&nbsp;has been hailed as a breakthrough that will usher in an era of rapid advances in science and technology, revolutionizing all aspects of human activity, but also painted as an existential threat.
EU lawmakers in June agreed to a trailblazing set of draft rules, which would make companies such as ChatGPT operator OpenAI&nbsp;disclose&nbsp;AI-generated content, help distinguish so-called deep fake images from real ones and ensure safeguards against illegal content.
The proposed legislation, which also envisages financial fines for rule violations, faces resistance from companies, with 160 executives last month signing a letter warning it could jeopardise Europe's competitiveness, investment and innovation.
Still,&nbsp;officials&nbsp;from the EU, which has signed "digital partnerships" with Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, voice optimism they can find common ground with international partners to advance cooperation on technologies including&nbsp;AI.
"Our mission is again to make sure that what's happening in the EU, which is our large constituency if I may say so, is protected," EU industry chief Thierry Breton told Reuters during a trip&nbsp;to&nbsp;South Korea and Japan to&nbsp;discuss&nbsp;AI&nbsp;and semiconductors.
"I believe that it will be probably not too far from each other because we share the same values," Breton said of regulation of&nbsp;AI&nbsp;in the EU and countries such as Japan.
Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) economies made of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States and the European Union, in May called for adoption of standards to&nbsp;create "trustworthy"&nbsp;AI&nbsp;and to set up a ministerial forum dubbed the "Hiroshima&nbsp;AI&nbsp;process".
Seoul will continue discussing&nbsp;AI&nbsp;regulation with the EU but is more interested in what the G7 is doing, a South Korean official said following a meeting with Breton.&nbsp;
The EU is planning to use the upcoming G20 meetings to further push for global collaboration on&nbsp;AI, notably with 2023 president India, van Huffelen told Reuters.
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(Reporting by Fanny Potkin, Sam Nussey and Supantha Mukherjee; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)

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EU's AI lobbying blitz gets lukewarm response in Asia- officials