Technology AI laws global effects! So What's in the EU AI ACT?
- Camille Zufferey
- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
Technology AI Laws global effect! TL;DR “EU AI Act Overview”
The EU’s proposed AI Act classifies AI systems by risk level:
Unacceptable risk: banned outright (e.g. manipulative systems, social scoring, untargeted facial recognition). Well unless you are the government. And then its ok.
High risk: heavily regulated (e.g. AI used in critical infrastructure, education, employment, health, legal, etc.)
Limited risk: subject to transparency obligations (e.g. users must know they are interacting with AI). Adding made by AI Meta data and as a caption.
Minimal risk: largely unregulated for everyday automatons.
High-risk providers (including those outside the EU if their AI services are used within the EU) face obligations like risk management, documentation, data governance, human oversight, robustness, cybersecurity, and conformity assessments. The question arises when users buy service from non-EU and then import their use into the EU.
General Purpose AI (GPAI) models get special rules: All providers must document training, publish summaries of training data, comply with copyright, and share downstream integration documentation. If a model is deemed “systemic” (very large scale), additional testing, incident reporting, and risk mitigation are required.
Governance structures include creating a central AI Office within the European Commission, responsible for oversight, compliance, evaluations and handling complaints.
Timelines:
Codes of practice and Prohibitions: In Effect
Governance and Confidentiality rules: In Effect
High-risk (Annex III): 2 Aug 2026
High-risk (Annex I): 2 Aug 2026
Large Scale GPAI: 2 Aug 2027
See the full timelines in the resources, I'm sure they'll all get pushed out as there's no incentive for the US or China to take their foot off the gas for the EU.
Our Opinion
This TLDR on Technology AI Laws Global Effects is a discussion primer for anyone that's exporting software globally.
Large economic blocs like the EU and the US will inevitably shape the direction of AI development through the gravitational pull of their purchasing power. Regardless of where legislation is enacted, global compliance will follow the leader, and that's not the EU at this stage.
From a market perceptive the US could ignore the EU since it has no comparative large scale AI R&D or obvious contender, certainly not on the scale of OpenAI or Grok. Therefore the knock-on effect for many large EU companies could be to implement AI out of jurisdiction just to stay competitive as a global player.
My guess is that the EU will force the block to observe these laws and relegate the EU to the status of an AI service importer. The flow of capital to the US will be difficult to shift in the short term anyway. These laws however will be a thorn in the side of every small tech company doing global business. As the cost of compliance is currently unknown.
Reach out to us if you'd like to discuss anything in this article, it seems technology policy and risk management will need to be implemented early at the design stage going forward. The cost of prevention is always cheaper than the cure.
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