EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689)

The eu-ai-act-regulation-2024-1689 is the European Union's comprehensive regulation establishing harmonized rules on artificial intelligence. This landmark legislation creates a risk-based regulatory framework for ai-systems across the EU, with different obligations based on the level of risk posed.

The regulation establishes four main categories: prohibited AI practices, high-risk-ai-systems, limited risk systems requiring transparency, and minimal risk systems. It prohibits certain AI practices including ai-systems-for-social-scoring, subliminal-manipulation-ai, and most uses of real-time-remote-biometric-identification in publicly accessible spaces.

For high-risk-ai-systems listed in annex-iii-high-risk-ai-systems, the regulation imposes strict requirements including risk-management-systems, data-governance-requirements, technical-documentation, record-keeping-requirements, transparency-requirements, human-oversight, and accuracy-robustness-cybersecurity measures.

The regulation also addresses general-purpose-ai-models, with additional obligations for those with systemic-risk. It establishes the ai-office for enforcement, creates ai-regulatory-sandboxes to support innovation, and sets up governance structures including the european-artificial-intelligence-board.

Key obligations fall on various operators including ai-system-providers, ai-system-deployers, importers, distributors, and authorised-representatives. The regulation includes significant penalties, with fines up to €35 million or 7% of global annual turnover for the most serious violations.

The regulation applies from August 2, 2026, with some provisions taking effect earlier, including prohibitions from February 2, 2025, and obligations for general-purpose-ai-models from August 2, 2025.