Providers of general-purpose AI models (foundation models, LLMs) must keep technical documentation, give downstream integrators information, publish a training-data summary and have a copyright policy. Models with systemic risk face extra evaluation and incident-reporting duties.
Who is affected
Companies that train or substantially fine-tune general-purpose AI models and place them on the EU market. Businesses merely using such models via API are not GPAI providers.
Sizes: micro, small, medium, large · Sectors: Software / SaaS, Media / marketing · Applies if: We use or build AI systems
What to do
If you release or heavily fine-tune a foundation model, prepare the technical documentation and the public training-data summary using the Commission template, and adopt a copyright compliance policy. Consider signing the GPAI Code of Practice as a simple route to compliance. If you only use third-party models, keep the provider's documentation on file.
Penalty
Up to €15M or 3% of worldwide turnover for GPAI providers
In force since 2025-02-02; the Digital Omnibus on AI (Reg. 2026/1744, in force 2026-07-27) softened Art. 4 to a duty to support AI literacy rather than guarantee it
Any business that develops or uses AI systems in the EU, including ordinary firms using AI chatbots, recruiting tools or analytics.
Kept at 2026-08-02 by the Digital Omnibus on AI; only the marking/detection duty for systems already on the market before this date is deferred to 2026-12-02
Any company that offers a customer-facing chatbot, generates synthetic media or text for the public, or uses emotion recognition or biometric categorisation.
Grace period introduced by the Digital Omnibus on AI (Reg. 2026/1744) for systems placed on the market before 2026-08-02; the new prohibition was also added by the Omnibus
Providers of generative AI products released before August 2026 that have not yet implemented watermarking; any business deploying image or video generators.
Postponed from 2026-08-02 by the Digital Omnibus on AI, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (OJ 2026-07-24, in force 2026-07-27)
Companies building such AI systems, and any employer or lender that uses them (deployer duties), regardless of size. SMEs get simplified documentation templates.