EU AI Act compliance:
what it requires and when.
A plain-English walkthrough of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 as amended by the Digital Omnibus, written for the people who have to implement it. Including the dates that moved in July 2026, which most guidance still has wrong.
Last updated Published by TryTrustableNot legal advice
When do the EU AI Act high-risk rules apply after the Digital Omnibus?
From 2 December 2027 for standalone Annex III systems, such as recruitment and credit scoring, and from 2 August 2028 for AI embedded in products regulated under Annex I. Both were set by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Digital Omnibus, which entered into force on 27 July 2026. The prohibitions, general-purpose AI rules and Article 50 transparency were not deferred.
The Omnibus is Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, published in the Official Journal on 24 July 2026. It rewrote Article 113 of the AI Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, which is where every application date lives. The table reads Article 113 as amended; where a date comes from a transitional provision instead, the row says so.
| Date | What applies | Source and what it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Aug 2024 | Entry into force of the AI Act | Twenty days after publication in the Official Journal on 12 July 2024. Nothing substantive applied yet. |
| 2 Feb 2025 | Article 5 prohibitions and Article 4 AI literacy (Chapters I and II) | Art. 113(a). Social scoring, untargeted facial scraping and emotion inference at work or school are banned outright. The Omnibus rewrote Article 4 as a duty to take measures supporting staff AI literacy rather than to ensure a sufficient level of it. |
| 2 Aug 2025 | General-purpose AI model obligations, governance, notified bodies, penalties regime | Art. 113(b): Chapter V, Chapter VII, Chapter III Section 4 and Chapter XII, except Article 101. GPAI models already on the market before this date have until 2 August 2027 under Art. 111(3). |
| 27 Jul 2026 | Digital Omnibus enters into force | Third day after publication. Moves the high-risk dates below; leaves the rest of the timetable alone. |
| 2 Aug 2026 | Article 50 transparency; general application; Article 101 fines for GPAI providers | Already applying. Disclose that a person is interacting with AI, mark synthetic content machine-readably, label deepfakes. Generative systems already on the market before this date get four months to meet the Article 50(2) marking duty. |
| 2 Dec 2026 | New Article 5 prohibitions; end of the Article 50(2) grace period | Art. 113(a) as amended. Two prohibitions added by the Omnibus (systems generating non-consensual intimate imagery of an identifiable person, and child sexual abuse material) apply from this date. |
| 2 Dec 2027 | High-risk obligations, standalone Annex III systems | Art. 113(c). Moved from 2 August 2026. Recruitment, credit scoring, education, essential services, law enforcement, migration and justice. |
| 2 Aug 2028 | High-risk obligations, Annex I embedded systems | Art. 113(c). Moved from 2 August 2027. AI inside products already regulated under EU product law : medical devices, machinery, toys, lifts. |
Checked September 2026 against the Official Journal text of Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 and Article 113 of the consolidated AI Act. Dates in this area have moved once and may move again.
The penalties regime has applied since August 2025, but only bites on an obligation once that obligation applies. What each tier of breach can cost is set out in EU AI Act penalties and fines.
Which hat you are wearing
Everything else follows from this, and it is decided per system rather than per company. Most organisations are a deployer of several AI systems and a provider of one, and the obligations are not remotely the same.
- Provider. You develop an AI system, or have one developed, and place it on the market or put it into service under your own name. The heavy obligations sit here
- Deployer. You use an AI system under your own authority. Lighter, but real: human oversight, input-data relevance, log retention, and informing affected people
- Importer and distributor. You bring a third-country system into the EU or make it available. Largely verification duties
- Provider by modification. Substantially modify a high-risk system, or put your name on it, and provider obligations transfer to you. Fine-tuning a general-purpose model for a high-risk purpose is the usual route into this without meaning to
Four tiers, and only one of them is heavy
The Act is risk-based rather than technology-based: what matters is what the system is used for, not how it was built.
| Tier | Examples | What is required |
|---|---|---|
| UnacceptableArticle 5 | Social scoring, untargeted scraping of facial images, emotion inference in workplaces and schools, certain predictive policing and biometric categorisation, and from 2 December 2026 non-consensual intimate imagery and child sexual abuse material | Prohibited. Not a compliance exercise: you stop. |
| High riskAnnex I and Annex III | Recruitment and worker management, credit scoring, education access, essential public and private services, law enforcement, migration, justice, and AI embedded in regulated products | Risk management system, data governance, technical documentation, logging, human oversight, accuracy and robustness, conformity assessment, registration, post-market monitoring. |
| Limited riskArticle 50 | Chatbots, emotion recognition, synthetic audio, image, video or text | Transparency. Tell people they are dealing with AI and mark synthetic content machine-readably. Applying since 2 August 2026. |
| Minimal risk | Spam filters, recommendation engines, most business AI | No obligations under the Act. Voluntary codes of conduct only. |
What a high-risk system actually has to carry
These are provider obligations, and they are product-safety obligations rather than policy ones: they attach to the system and have to be demonstrable before it is placed on the market.
- A risk management system that runs across the lifecycle rather than a document written once
- Data governance covering training, validation and test sets: relevance, representativeness, and examination for bias
- Technical documentation to Annex IV, complete before market placement and kept current
- Automatic logging over the system's lifetime, with logs kept for at least six months
- Human oversight designed in, such that a person can understand, intervene and stop
- Accuracy, robustness and cybersecurity appropriate to the purpose, and declared
- Conformity assessment and CE marking, plus registration in the EU database
- Post-market monitoring and serious-incident reporting
Deployers carry a shorter list: use the system per instructions, assign competent human oversight, ensure input data is relevant, keep logs, and inform people subject to a decision it supports. Public bodies and some private deployers also owe a fundamental-rights impact assessment.
None of it can start before you know which systems you run. An inventory naming each system, its purpose, its provider, its data and its outputs is the first artefact an authority or a customer will ask for, and it is what the AI governance engine is built around.
Where this meets the rest of your programme
Very little of the above is unique to AI. Risk management, data governance, logging, access control, incident reporting and post-market monitoring are the same controls that SOC 2, ISO 27001 and, for personal data, the GDPR and the DPDP Act already ask you to operate. What changes is the evidence each regime wants and the object it attaches to.
That is the argument for holding one control set rather than one per framework: the coverage page shows which regimes reuse which controls. If a customer is asking for a certificate rather than a conformity assessment, ISO 42001 is the standard they mean, and the EU AI Act versus ISO 42001 covers why a certificate gets you part of the way and is often mistaken for getting you all of it.
The things people ask us
When do the EU AI Act high-risk rules apply after the Digital Omnibus?
From 2 December 2027 for standalone Annex III systems, such as recruitment and credit scoring, and from 2 August 2028 for AI embedded in products regulated under Annex I. Both were set by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Digital Omnibus, which entered into force on 27 July 2026. The prohibitions, general-purpose AI rules and Article 50 transparency were not deferred. A great deal of published guidance still quotes the original 2 August 2026 date.
Does the delay mean we can wait until 2027?
No, for two reasons. The Article 5 prohibitions and the Article 50 transparency duties were not delayed and already apply, and conformity assessment for a high-risk system is not a task you can start three months out. The deferral moved the deadline for one tier of obligations; it did not pause the Act.
Does the AI Act apply to us if we are not in the EU?
It applies where the output of the system is used in the EU, regardless of where you are established. An Indian company whose recruitment tool screens candidates for an EU employer is in scope as a provider, and the employer is a deployer with its own separate obligations.
What is the difference between a provider and a deployer?
A provider develops an AI system or has one developed and places it on the market under its own name. A deployer uses one under its own authority. Most companies are deployers of several systems and providers of one, and the obligations differ substantially, so the first task is deciding which hat you wear for each system.
Does fine-tuning someone else's model make us a provider?
It can. Substantial modification of a high-risk system, or putting your own name on it, transfers provider obligations to you. Fine-tuning a general-purpose model and deploying it for a high-risk purpose is the commonest way a company becomes a provider without intending to.
Is an internal tool in scope?
Placing on the market and putting into service both count, and putting into service includes supplying for your own use. An internal CV-screening tool is an Annex III high-risk system whether or not anyone outside the company ever sees it.
Does ISO 42001 certification make us EU AI Act compliant?
No. ISO/IEC 42001 certifies an organisation's AI management system; the AI Act regulates individual AI systems as products and asks for risk classification, Annex IV documentation and conformity assessment per system. A certificate is good evidence that your governance is real, and it builds much of the machinery the Act assumes, but it is not a declaration of conformity.
Govern the models, not just the paperwork.
We show you a real model registered, risk-classified, evaluated and evidenced against the AI Act and ISO 42001 from the same control set. Thirty minutes.