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EU AI Act
Know the rule before it knows you.
Obligations follow the role you play: provider, deployer, importer or distributor.
What it is
The AI Act is the first comprehensive law on artificial intelligence. It bans a short list of practices, imposes strict requirements on 'high-risk' systems in areas such as employment, credit, education and essential services, sets transparency duties for chatbots and synthetic content, and regulates general-purpose AI models. Obligations depend on whether you provide the system, deploy it, or both.
This applies to you if
- You build, fine-tune or white-label an AI system and offer it in the EU under your name
- You use AI to screen candidates, assess creditworthiness, price insurance, grade students or control access to services
- You run chatbots, generate synthetic images, audio or text, or use emotion recognition
- You are outside the EU but your system's output is used in the EU
What it asks of you
- AI literacy for staff who operate or oversee AI systems
- An inventory of AI systems with a documented risk classification for each
- For high-risk systems: risk management, data governance, technical documentation, logging, human oversight, accuracy and cybersecurity, conformity assessment and registration
- For deployers of high-risk systems: use according to instructions, human oversight, monitoring, and in some cases a fundamental-rights impact assessment
- Transparency to users when they interact with AI or see AI-generated content
What it costs to ignore
Up to EUR 35 million or 7% of worldwide turnover for prohibited practices; up to EUR 15 million or 3% for most other breaches; up to EUR 7.5 million or 1% for incorrect information.
Key dates
In force 1 August 2024. Prohibitions and AI literacy from 2 February 2025; general-purpose AI model duties from 2 August 2025; most high-risk obligations from 2 August 2026, with product-embedded systems from August 2027. The Digital Omnibus proposal would postpone some high-risk deadlines; we track the current state.
How we help
Not sure which apply to you? Send us three lines about what you sell and to whom, and we will tell you which rules matter and which do not.
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