BRUSSELS, July 3 (Reuters) - A code of practice designed

to help thousands of companies comply with the European Union's

landmark artificial intelligence rules may only apply at the end

of 2025, the European Commission said on Thursday.

Alphabet's Google, Meta Platforms ( META ),

European companies such as Mistral and ASML as well as

several EU governments have called for a delay in implementing

the Artificial Intelligence Act, partly due to the lack of a

code of practice.

Publication of the Code of Practice for large language

models (GPAI), such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and similar models

launched by Google and Mistral, had originally been planned for

May 2.

The Commission plans to present the code in the coming days

and expects companies to sign up next month and the guidance

likely to kick in at the end of the year, a Commission

spokesperson said.

"On the AI Act's GPAI rules, the European AI Board is

discussing the timing to implement the Code of Practice, with

the end of 2025 being considered," he said.

Signing up to the code is voluntary, but companies who

decline to do so, as some Big Tech firms have indicated, will

not benefit from the legal certainty provided to a signatory.

The Commission pushed back against calls for a delay in

rolling out the AI rules.

"Our commitment to the goals of the AI Act, such as

establishing harmonised risk-based rules across the EU and

ensuring the safety of AI systems in the European market,

remains unchanged," the spokesperson said.

Campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory decried Big

Tech's role.

"Delay. Pause. Deregulate. That is Big Tech's lobby

playbook to fatally weaken rules that should protect us from

biased and unfair AI systems," said Bram Vranken, Corporate

Europe Observatory researcher and campaigner.

The AI rules for GPAI models will become legally binding

on August 2 but only enforced a year later for new models placed

on the market starting from next month. Existing models will

have two years to August 2, 2027 to comply with the rules.