The EU AI Act, the European Union’s artificial intelligence regulation, had worldwide impact when it entered force on August 1, 2024. But we’re only halfway through this act: another wave of its provisions take effect this weekend, with more to come next year.
The act imposes prohibitions or conditions on AI systems depending on whether their impact is considered unacceptable, high, limited or minimal, with a gradual rollout schedule for the rules. The prohibitions on unacceptable risk AI systems have been in effect since February 2, 2025. On August 2, 2025, measures relating to governance standards, general purpose AI (GPAI) models, and the sanctions regime, among others, will be activated. Certain exemptions mean that full implementation of the law won’t happen until 2030.
A quiet beginning
While some of the act’s measures — including the ban on unacceptably risky AI systems, the opening of the European AI office, and the provision of guidelines for GPAI models are already technically in effect, they have been largely invisible, according to Víctor Rodríguez, senior lecturer in the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM). “Since sanctions don’t start until August 2, 2025, we haven’t seen examples with ‘media impact.’ We will see them soon,” he said. Rodriguez alluded to other factors with an impact on regulation, such as the arrival of a new Trump administration in the White House, which may have impacted how the EU’s regulation is perceived. “The European Commission wanted to repeat the success of the Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which served as a beacon for a world that largely tried to replicate the regulation, but this so-called ‘Brussels effect’ may not happen this time,” he says, citing tech giants’ division over the EU’s General Purpose AI Code of Practice that Google agreed to sign but Meta refused.
