Understand the main elements of AI-specific laws.
- ✓The EU AI Act protects health, safety and fundamental rights, using a product-safety model.
- ✓Four tiers: prohibited, high-risk, transparency (limited), minimal. GPAI models have their own track.
- ✓Classification follows intended purpose and context, not technique.
- ✓Scope is extraterritorial: non-EU providers are covered when they target the EU market or their output is used there.
- Risk-based approach:
- Regulating AI in proportion to the harm a use could cause, so obligations rise with the risk to health, safety and fundamental rights.
- Intended purpose:
- The use a provider intends for an AI system, including its context and conditions of use; it drives risk classification.
- Fundamental rights:
- Rights protected by the EU Charter, such as dignity, privacy, nondiscrimination and a fair trial, which the AI Act aims to safeguard alongside health and safety.
- Extraterritorial scope:
- The AI Act's reach to non-EU providers and deployers when their AI is placed on the EU market or its output is used in the EU.
Exam tips: If a stem describes the technology but not the use, pick the answer that asks about purpose and context. Risk attaches to the use. · Social scoring is banned for companies too, not just governments. · 'No obligations for minimal-risk AI' is almost right: AI literacy (Art. 4) still applies to every provider and deployer. · Military, defense and national-security AI is out of scope entirely. Don't classify it as high-risk.
- ✓Art. 5 bans eight practices: manipulation, exploiting vulnerabilities, social scoring, profiling-only crime prediction, facial scraping, workplace/education emotion recognition, sensitive biometric categorization, police real-time remote biometric ID.
- ✓The exceptions are narrow: medical or safety for emotion recognition; authorized, targeted cases for police biometric ID.
- ✓The Omnibus added bans on non-consensual intimate deepfakes and AI-generated child sexual abuse material from 2 Dec 2026.
- ✓Prohibited practices sit in the top fine tier: €35M or 7% of worldwide turnover.
- Prohibited AI practice:
- An AI use banned outright by Art. 5 because it's incompatible with EU values and fundamental rights.
- Social scoring:
- Evaluating people over time based on behavior or personal traits in a way that leads to unjustified or disproportionate detrimental treatment.
- Real-time remote biometric identification:
- Identifying people at a distance, live, by comparing their biometric data (usually faces) with a database, without their active involvement.
- Emotion recognition system:
- AI that identifies or infers people's emotions or intentions from biometric data such as facial expressions or voice.
- Untargeted scraping:
- Indiscriminately harvesting facial images from the internet or CCTV to build or expand a facial-recognition database.
Exam tips: Emotion recognition is the classic near-miss: banned at work and in education (except medical or safety reasons), high-risk elsewhere. · The real-time biometric ban targets law enforcement in publicly accessible spaces. After-the-fact ('post') identification is high-risk, not banned. · Neither consent nor a CE mark makes a prohibited practice lawful. · Dates: original bans since 2 Feb 2025; the two Omnibus bans from 2 Dec 2026.
- ✓Door 1 (Annex I): AI in regulated products that need third-party conformity assessment.
- ✓Door 2 (Annex III): eight sensitive areas, from biometrics to justice and democracy, with specific carve-outs.
- ✓The Art. 6(3) exit covers narrow, procedural or preparatory tasks, must be documented and registered, and never applies to profiling.
- ✓Art. 50 transparency: chatbots disclose, generative outputs are marked, deepfakes and emotion recognition are disclosed, from 2 Aug 2026.
- Annex I route:
- AI that is, or is a safety component of, a product covered by listed EU product-safety laws and requiring third-party conformity assessment (Art. 6(1)).
- Annex III route:
- AI used in one of eight listed sensitive areas, such as employment, credit, education or law enforcement (Art. 6(2)).
- Safety component:
- A part of a product or system that performs a safety function, or whose failure endangers health, safety or property.
- Art. 6(3) derogation:
- The exit from Annex III high-risk status for systems posing no significant risk, such as narrow procedural or preparatory tasks; never available if the system profiles people.
- Profiling:
- Automated processing of personal data to evaluate aspects of a person, such as work performance, finances, health, preferences or behavior.
- Deepfake:
- AI-generated or manipulated image, audio or video that resembles real people, places or events and would falsely appear authentic.
Exam tips: Profiling of natural persons means always high-risk under Annex III. The Art. 6(3) exit is closed. · Fraud detection is carved out of the credit-scoring entry; car insurance isn't listed (only life and health). · A human in the loop doesn't change the tier. Classification follows intended purpose. · Medical devices, toys, machinery, cars: think Annex I. Hiring, credit, education, benefits: think Annex III.
- ✓Seven requirements, Arts. 9–15: risk management, data governance, technical documentation, record-keeping, transparency to deployers, human oversight, accuracy/robustness/cybersecurity.
- ✓Risk management covers intended use and reasonably foreseeable misuse, for the system's whole life.
- ✓Data must be relevant, representative, as error-free as possible, and examined for bias.
- ✓Logs at least six months; technical documentation 10 years.
- Risk management system (Art. 9):
- A continuous, iterative process across the life cycle to identify, evaluate and mitigate risks to health, safety and fundamental rights.
- Reasonably foreseeable misuse:
- Use of an AI system in a way its provider didn't intend but which could result from predictable human behavior or interaction with other systems.
- Technical documentation (Annex IV):
- The dossier a provider draws up before market placement to show a high-risk system meets the requirements.
- Automation bias:
- The tendency to over-rely on an automated system's output, even when it's wrong.
- Instructions for use:
- Information a provider must give deployers about a high-risk system's purpose, performance, limitations, oversight and maintenance (Art. 13).
Exam tips: Risk management under Art. 9 is continuous and life-cycle long. Any option framing it as a one-time pre-launch check is wrong. · Disclosing a known risk in the instructions doesn't discharge the duty to mitigate it. · Logs = traceability (Art. 12). Technical documentation = proof of compliance (Art. 11). Instructions = what deployers need (Art. 13). · Human oversight is a design feature the provider builds in AND a duty the deployer staffs.
- ✓Path to market: QMS → conformity assessment → declaration → CE marking → registration → launch.
- ✓Most Annex III systems self-assess; notified bodies handle some biometrics and Annex I products.
- ✓After launch: post-market monitoring, corrective action, and serious-incident reporting within 15/10/2 days.
- ✓Providers register Annex III systems in the EU database; public-authority deployers register their use.
- Quality management system (QMS):
- A provider's documented policies and procedures ensuring a high-risk system is designed, built, tested and monitored in compliance with the Act (Art. 17).
- Conformity assessment:
- The process of showing a high-risk system meets the requirements, either by internal control or with a notified body (Art. 43).
- Notified body:
- An independent, accredited organization designated by a Member State to assess the conformity of certain high-risk systems.
- CE marking:
- The mark a provider affixes to show a high-risk AI system conforms to the AI Act's requirements (Art. 48).
- Post-market monitoring:
- A provider's ongoing, documented collection and analysis of a system's real-world performance throughout its life (Art. 72).
- Serious incident:
- An incident or malfunction leading to death or serious harm to health, serious disruption of critical infrastructure, breach of fundamental-rights law, or serious harm to property or the environment.
Exam tips: The default conformity route for Annex III is internal control. Notified bodies appear for biometrics (without harmonized standards) and Annex I products. · FRIA is a deployer duty. Conformity assessment, declaration, CE marking, registration and post-market monitoring are provider duties. · Incident clocks: 15 days generally, 10 days for a death, 2 days for widespread infringement or critical-infrastructure disruption. · CE marking isn't a lifetime pass: a substantial modification means a new conformity assessment.
- ✓Art. 26: follow instructions, staff human oversight, check input data, monitor, suspend if risky, report incidents, keep logs, inform workers and affected people.
- ✓Art. 27 FRIA before first use for public bodies, public-service providers, and credit or life/health insurance deployers; notify the authority.
- ✓AI literacy (Art. 4) applies to all providers and deployers; the Omnibus softened it to supporting literacy.
- ✓Art. 86 gives affected people a right to an explanation of the AI's role in significant decisions.
- Deployer:
- A person or organization using an AI system under its own authority, except for purely personal, non-professional use.
- Fundamental rights impact assessment (FRIA):
- An assessment certain deployers must complete before first using a high-risk system, describing affected groups, risks of harm and mitigation (Art. 27).
- AI literacy (Art. 4):
- Skills, knowledge and understanding that let people make informed use of AI and grasp its risks; providers and deployers must take measures to support it.
- Right to explanation (Art. 86):
- An affected person's right to a clear, meaningful explanation from the deployer of the AI's role in a significant decision based on an Annex III high-risk system.
Exam tips: FRIA = deployer duty, only for public bodies, private providers of public services, and credit-scoring or life/health-insurance deployers. · A deployer can't hide behind the vendor's CE mark. The mark covers the provider's obligations, not how you use the system. · Deployers keep the logs under their control for at least six months and must inform workers before workplace use. · AI literacy covers every AI system, applied from 2 Feb 2025, and since the Omnibus means 'take measures to support', not 'guarantee a level'.
- ✓Provider (builds and certifies), deployer (uses), importer (brings non-EU systems in), distributor (resells), authorized rep (acts for a non-EU provider).
- ✓Importers and distributors check CE marks, declarations and instructions, and stop nonconforming systems.
- ✓Art. 25: own name, substantial modification, or a new high-risk purpose makes you the provider; the original provider must cooperate.
- ✓Building for internal use still makes you a provider.
- Provider:
- Whoever develops an AI system or GPAI model, or has it developed, and places it on the market or puts it into service under its own name or trademark.
- Importer:
- An EU-established entity that places on the EU market an AI system bearing the name or trademark of a provider established outside the EU.
- Distributor:
- Any supply-chain actor, other than the provider or importer, that makes an AI system available on the EU market.
- Authorized representative:
- An EU-established entity with a written mandate from a non-EU provider to carry out specified obligations on its behalf.
- Substantial modification:
- A change after market placement, not foreseen in the original conformity assessment, that affects compliance or changes the intended purpose.
Exam tips: Roles follow conduct, not contracts or job titles. Rebrand, substantially modify, or repurpose into high-risk, and you're the provider (Art. 25). · Importer = EU entity placing a non-EU provider's branded system on the EU market. Distributor = anyone else making it available. · Distributors and importers verify; they don't re-certify. · One company can be provider and deployer at once, and owes both sets of duties.
- ✓All GPAI providers: technical documentation, downstream information, copyright policy, training-content summary.
- ✓Systemic risk (presumed above 10²⁵ FLOPs): add evaluation and adversarial testing, risk mitigation, incident reporting, cybersecurity.
- ✓The GPAI Code of Practice (July 2025) is the recognized way to demonstrate compliance; the AI Office enforces, with fines from 2 Aug 2026.
- ✓Applies since 2 Aug 2025; legacy models by 2 Aug 2027; not deferred by the Omnibus.
- GPAI model:
- An AI model with significant generality that can competently perform a wide range of distinct tasks and be integrated into many downstream systems.
- GPAI system:
- An AI system based on a general-purpose AI model, able to serve a variety of purposes directly or when integrated into other systems.
- Systemic risk:
- Risk from high-impact GPAI capabilities that could significantly affect the EU market, public health, safety, security or fundamental rights at scale; presumed above 10²⁵ FLOPs.
- Training-content summary:
- A public, sufficiently detailed summary of the data used to train a GPAI model, prepared using the Commission's template (Art. 53(1)(d)).
- GPAI Code of Practice:
- A voluntary code (July 2025) with transparency, copyright, and safety and security chapters that providers can rely on to demonstrate compliance.
Exam tips: 10²⁵ FLOPs = EU systemic-risk presumption. 10²⁶ = California SB 53 frontier models (and Korea's 'high-performance' AI). Don't swap them. · The open-source exemption is partial: the copyright policy and training summary are still required, and nothing is exempt for systemic-risk models. · GPAI models aren't CE-marked or entered in the high-risk database. The AI Office supervises them. · A GPAI-based system used for a high-risk purpose is high-risk; the model provider still has only GPAI duties for the model.
- ✓Two-level enforcement: the AI Office centrally for GPAI; national market surveillance authorities for AI systems.
- ✓The AI Board, scientific panel and advisory forum advise and support; notifying authorities oversee notified bodies.
- ✓Fines: €35M/7%, €15M/3%, €7.5M/1%; higher of the two for large firms, lower for SMEs (and small mid-caps for the lower two tiers).
- ✓Anyone can complain to a market surveillance authority; every Member State must offer a regulatory sandbox.
- AI Office:
- The European Commission's AI body that supervises GPAI models and, after the Omnibus, certain AI systems built on them; it can investigate and fine GPAI providers.
- European AI Board:
- A body of Member State representatives that advises the Commission and promotes consistent application of the AI Act; it has no fining power.
- Market surveillance authority:
- A national authority that monitors AI systems on its market and can investigate, order corrective action or withdrawal, and impose fines.
- AI regulatory sandbox:
- A controlled framework set up by a competent authority where providers can develop and test AI under regulatory supervision.
- SME penalty rule:
- For SMEs and start-ups, each AI Act fine is capped at the lower of the fixed amount and the turnover percentage (Art. 99(6)).
Exam tips: Ladder: 35/7 prohibited · 15/3 most obligations (including GPAI) · 7.5/1 misleading information. Expect swapped numbers as distractors. · SMEs and start-ups pay the LOWER of the two amounts; everyone else the HIGHER. · AI Office = GPAI models (and, post-Omnibus, AI systems built on a provider's own GPAI model). National authorities = most AI systems. The AI Board coordinates; it doesn't fine. · The GDPR's €20M / 4% is a separate regime. Don't mix the caps.
- ✓Entry into force 1 Aug 2024; bans and AI literacy from 2 Feb 2025; GPAI from 2 Aug 2025; general application and Art. 50 from 2 Aug 2026.
- ✓The Digital Omnibus (Reg. (EU) 2026/1744, in force 27 Jul 2026) deferred Annex III to 2 Dec 2027 and Annex I to 2 Aug 2028.
- ✓New bans and the end of the legacy marking grace both fall on 2 Dec 2026.
- ✓Know both the original and amended dates; the exam outline was written before the Omnibus.
- Digital Omnibus on AI:
- Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, in force 27 July 2026, which deferred high-risk dates, added two prohibitions and simplified parts of the AI Act.
- Entry into force vs application:
- A law can be in force (legally existing) before its obligations apply; the AI Act entered into force on 1 Aug 2024 but applies in stages.
- Marking grace period:
- Extra time, until 2 Dec 2026, for generative AI systems placed on the market before 2 Aug 2026 to add machine-readable marking.
- Legacy system:
- An AI system or model already on the market before the relevant application date, which may benefit from transitional rules.
Exam tips: Never moved: prohibitions (Feb 2025), GPAI (Aug 2025), Art. 50 transparency (Aug 2026). · Moved: Annex III → 2 Dec 2027; Annex I → 2 Aug 2028. · The 2 Dec 2026 marking grace is only for generative systems already on the market before 2 Aug 2026. · If an option uses the original 2 Aug 2026 high-risk date, check whether the question asks about the law as first adopted. BoK v2.1 predates the Omnibus.
- ✓Art. 4 literacy, Art. 5 bans, Art. 6 classification, Arts. 9–15 requirements, Art. 16–17 provider duties and QMS.
- ✓Arts. 22–27: authorized reps, importers, distributors, role flips, deployers, FRIA.
- ✓Arts. 43–50: conformity, declaration, CE, registration, transparency.
- ✓Arts. 51–56 GPAI; 72–73 monitoring and incidents; 85–86 complaints and explanations; 99/101 penalties.
- Annex I:
- The list of EU product-safety laws (medical devices, toys, machinery, vehicles and more) whose regulated products can make embedded AI high-risk.
- Annex III:
- The list of eight sensitive areas of use that make an AI system high-risk, such as employment, credit and education.
- Annex IV:
- The required contents of a high-risk system's technical documentation.
- Chapter V:
- The part of the AI Act (Arts. 51–56) setting obligations for general-purpose AI models.
Exam tips: Common swaps: Art. 23 importers vs Art. 24 distributors; Art. 53 (all GPAI) vs Art. 55 (systemic risk); Art. 26 deployers vs Art. 27 FRIA. · Arts. 9–15 run in a fixed order: risk, data, docs, logs, instructions, oversight, robustness. · Fines live in Art. 99 (everyone) and Art. 101 (GPAI providers).
- ✓In force 22 Jan 2026: the second comprehensive AI law after the EU's.
- ✓Duties attach to high-impact AI, generative AI and high-performance (10²⁶ FLOPs) AI.
- ✓Self-assessment, meaningful explanations, user protection and human oversight; generative outputs labeled.
- ✓Enforced by MSIT; fines up to ₩30M; foreign operators above thresholds need a domestic representative.
- High-impact AI (Korea):
- AI that may significantly affect human life, physical safety or fundamental rights in listed areas such as health care, hiring, lending and public services.
- AI business operator:
- Under Korea's Act, an entity that develops AI or uses AI to provide products or services.
- Domestic representative:
- A local agent that foreign AI operators above set thresholds must appoint to deal with Korean authorities.
- MSIT:
- South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT, which leads implementation and enforcement of the AI Basic Act.
- High-performance AI (Korea):
- AI trained with cumulative compute of 10²⁶ FLOPs or more, which carries life-cycle safety duties.
Exam tips: 'High-impact' = Korea; 'high-risk' = EU. The stem's vocabulary tells you which law. · Korea has no Article 5-style banned list and no mandatory third-party conformity assessment. · Fines top out at ₩30 million, and MSIT announced a grace period of at least a year from January 2026. · Light-touch isn't no-touch: generative AI labeling and high-impact duties still apply.
- ✓US federal AI governance = existing laws via existing agencies + targeted statutes + executive policy.
- ✓TAKE IT DOWN Act (signed 19 May 2025): NCII crimes including deepfakes; platforms remove within 48 hours; FTC enforcement from 19 May 2026.
- ✓Executive posture: EO 14179 and the AI Action Plan (deregulatory), EO 14365 (preemption push via litigation and funding).
- ✓No federal preemption statute yet, so state AI laws still apply.
- TAKE IT DOWN Act:
- A 2025 federal law criminalizing publication of non-consensual intimate imagery, including AI deepfakes, and requiring platforms to remove it within 48 hours of a valid request.
- Non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII):
- Intimate images of a person shared without their consent, whether authentic or AI-generated.
- Covered platform:
- Under TAKE IT DOWN, a public website, online service or app that primarily hosts user-generated content.
- Preemption:
- Federal law overriding conflicting state law; it requires Congress, a valid federal regulation or a court, not an executive order alone.
- EO 14365:
- The December 2025 executive order seeking a national AI policy framework and creating a DOJ task force to challenge state AI laws.
Exam tips: No comprehensive federal AI law. Expect answers built on existing laws (FTC Act, civil-rights, credit) plus the TAKE IT DOWN Act. · TAKE IT DOWN: 48 calendar hours, covers AI deepfakes, FTC enforces the platform duty since 19 May 2026. · Executive orders can't preempt state law on their own; state AI laws stay enforceable unless Congress or a court says otherwise. · The National AI Initiative Act coordinates federal AI R&D. It's the classic 'which law does NOT regulate companies' answer.
- ✓Colorado SB 26-189 (from 1 Jan 2027) replaced the never-effective SB 24-205 with ADMT notice, explanation, correction and human-review duties.
- ✓Texas TRAIGA (from 1 Jan 2026): intent-based prohibitions, government-only social-scoring ban, AG enforcement, sandbox.
- ✓California: SB 53 frontier safety (10²⁶ operations), AB 2013 training data, SB 942 provenance, CCPA ADMT rules.
- ✓Hiring: NYC LL 144 bias audits and notice; Illinois HB 3773 and the AI Video Interview Act. Utah requires AI disclosure.
- Automated decision-making technology (ADMT):
- Technology that processes personal data to produce outputs, such as scores or recommendations, used to make or assist decisions about people.
- Consequential decision:
- A decision with significant effects on access to things like employment, housing, credit, insurance, health care or education.
- Intent-based liability:
- Liability that requires proof the AI was built or used for a prohibited purpose; disparate impact alone isn't enough (the Texas model).
- Frontier developer (SB 53):
- A developer that trained a foundation model using more than 10²⁶ operations; 'large' frontier developers also exceed $500M in annual revenue.
- Bias audit (NYC LL 144):
- An annual, independent evaluation of an automated employment decision tool's impact by sex and race/ethnicity, with a public summary.
Exam tips: Colorado = impact (what happened); Texas = intent (what you meant). Both: Attorney General only, with a 60-day cure. · A 'duty of reasonable care against algorithmic discrimination' with impact assessments describes Colorado's repealed SB 24-205. BoK v2.1 was approved before the repeal, so know both. · California trio: SB 53 = frontier safety; AB 2013 = training data; SB 942 = provenance and detection. New York's RAISE Act (from 1 Jan 2027) mirrors SB 53 with a stricter 72-hour incident clock. · NYC LL 144 needs an independent auditor; an internal review doesn't count.
- ✓Many guides predate the final AI Act, the 2025 withdrawals and the 2026 Omnibus, so check their legal facts.
- ✓AI Act: in force 1 Aug 2024; fines €35M / 7%, €15M / 3%, €7.5M / 1%; SMEs pay the lower.
- ✓Gone: EO 14110 (revoked), Canada's AIDA (died), the AI Liability Directive (withdrawn), Colorado SB 24-205 (replaced).
- ✓The NIST AI RMF has a Core and Profiles, not implementation tiers.
- ✓Older guides still teach useful concepts; verify their law against current sources.
- Draft vs. final text:
- A legislative proposal or negotiating draft can change before adoption; only the final published text binds, so figures quoted from drafts go stale.
- Withdrawn proposal:
- A legislative proposal the European Commission formally abandons, such as the AI Liability Directive in 2025; it never becomes law.
- Revoked executive order:
- A presidential order cancelled by a later order, as EO 14110 was in January 2025; it no longer directs federal agencies.
- Implementation tiers:
- A NIST Cybersecurity Framework feature describing how rigorous an organization's practices are; the AI RMF 1.0 has no tiers.
- Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA):
- Canada's proposed federal AI law, part of Bill C-27, which died when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025.
Exam tips: Draft figures (€30M / 6%, €20M / 4%) are distractors. The final ladder is €35M / 7%, €15M / 3%, €7.5M / 1%. · If an option treats AIDA, the AI Liability Directive or EO 14110 as live, it's almost certainly wrong. · Art. 50 limited-risk duties are disclosure and marking. 'Must offer an opt-out' is a trap. · High-risk dates: the amended law says 2 Dec 2027 (Annex III) and 2 Aug 2028 (Annex I). BoK v2.1 predates the change, so read the stem's framing.
Independent study aid, not affiliated with the IAPP. Written with AI from primary sources; laws change, so check the sources. Last updated 7 Nov 2026.
