EU Artificial Intelligence Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) and 2026 Digital Omnibus amendments
European Parliament and Council · 2024-08-01 (in force); amended 2026-07-27
The world's first comprehensive AI law, banning some uses and requiring safety and transparency for risky ones. Bans and rules for large models are live, but in 2026 the EU delayed its high-risk rules by 16-24 months under industry pressure.
What it calls for
- Safety evaluations
- Transparency
- Human oversight
- Fairness non discrimination
- Privacy
- Liability
- Data rights
Scope
Binding across 27 EU member states; extraterritorial for providers placing systems on the EU market
What actually happened
Milestones met: prohibited practices applied 2025-02-02; GPAI obligations applied 2025-08-02 with the Code of Practice signed by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Mistral (Meta refused; xAI signed only the safety chapter) (https://techinformed.com/meta-rejects-eu-ai-code-of-practice/). Milestone delayed: the Digital Omnibus (Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, OJ 2026-07-24, in force 2026-07-27; https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/ai-omnibus-enters-force), pushed high-risk obligations from 2026-08-02 to 2027-12-02 (Annex III) and 2028-08-02 (Annex I), softened AI-literacy duties, and gave a watermarking grace period to 2026-12-02 (https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/eu-ai-omnibus-enters-force-amending-ai-act). The AI Office's powers over GPAI providers were expanded in the same package.