STRASBOURG, March 13 (Reuters) - Europe moved closer to

adopting the world's first artificial intelligence rules on

Wednesday as EU lawmakers endorsed a provisional agreement for a

technology whose use is rapidly growing across a wide swathe of

industries and in everyday life.

The legislation called the AI Act will regulate

foundation models or generative AI such as Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed

OpenAI that are trained on large volumes of data to

generate new content and even perform tasks.

It will restrict governments' use of real-time biometric

surveillance in public spaces to cases of certain crimes,

prevention of genuine threats, such as terrorist attacks, and

searches for people suspected of the most serious crimes.

The rules will cover high-impact, general-purpose AI

models and high-risk AI systems which will have to comply with

specific transparency obligations and EU copyright laws.

"I welcome the overwhelming support from the European

Parliament for the EU AI Act, the world's first comprehensive,

binding framework for trustworthy AI. Europe is now a global

standard-setter in trustworthy AI," EU industry chief Thierry

Breton said.

The European Parliament and EU countries had clinched a

preliminary deal in December after nearly 40 hours of

negotiations on issues such as governments' use of biometric

surveillance and how to regulate foundation models of generative

AI such as ChatGPT.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Ros

Russell)