What’s Covered?
Published in response to the AI Act’s official adoption in July 2024, this ten-part article series is a practical walkthrough of the EU AI Act’s operational consequences. It’s designed for organizations that now face phased obligations under a sweeping new risk-based AI regulatory framework.
The series touches on everything from definitions and scope to oversight and compliance, each installment focusing on a distinct area of the law. Highlights include:
- Scope and Key Actors: Clarifies which AI systems and stakeholders (providers, deployers, importers, distributors) fall under the Act, and where exemptions apply.
- Risk Classification: Unpacks the Act’s tiered structure—prohibited, high-risk, limited-risk, and minimal-risk AI—and explains how to perform risk assessments.
- High-Risk Obligations: Deep dive into Articles 8–22, detailing documentation, transparency, data governance, human oversight, and logging requirements.
- Non-provider Responsibilities: Explains duties of deployers, importers, distributors, and authorized representatives across the AI supply chain.
- General-purpose AI (GPAI) Models: Introduces obligations specific to GPAI developers, including those with systemic risks, and how they differ from system providers.
- Governance: Maps out EU and national enforcement bodies, including the European AI Office and national market surveillance authorities.
- AI Assurance: Discusses conformity assessments, harmonized standards, and emerging practices in third-party auditing of AI systems.
- Post-market Monitoring: Lays out incident reporting rules, user feedback loops, and enforcement structures, along with challenges in fragmentation.
- Alignment with Broader EU Digital Laws: Explores overlaps with the GDPR, DSA, DMA, NIS2, and copyright law—especially important for legal and privacy teams.
- GDPR Leverage: Offers practical tips on how to build on existing data protection practices to ease AI compliance.
Each section is written in a clear, practitioner-oriented tone, making legal complexities more accessible for operational teams. The content serves not just as legal guidance, but as a checklist of actions, responsibilities, and timelines that affected entities need to start preparing for now.
💡 Why it matters?
The AI Act isn’t just another compliance box—it’s a reshaping of the AI development pipeline. Organizations will need to rethink how they design, deploy, monitor, and document AI systems. This series bridges the gap between regulation and real-world practice, helping teams get ahead of costly compliance gaps and avoid enforcement risks as implementation rolls out.
What’s Missing?
While comprehensive, the series doesn’t include detailed industry-specific guidance (e.g. AI in health, education, or mobility), nor does it offer model documentation templates or tooling suggestions for assessments. There’s also little practical insight yet into how the conformity assessments or GPAI systemic risk thresholds will be interpreted in early enforcement phases. Organizations seeking granular operational playbooks or examples from other jurisdictions (like Canada’s AIDA or U.S. EO 14110) might need to look elsewhere.
Best For:
Legal counsel, DPOs, compliance managers, product leads, and AI governance professionals across the EU or working with EU-facing AI services. Especially useful for companies classifying systems under the Act or designing governance frameworks that align with broader digital compliance obligations.
Source Details:
Published by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), the world’s largest community of privacy and data protection professionals. The series was authored by leading European legal experts in AI, tech law, and regulatory compliance. It reflects insights from the EU legislative process and connects AI Act requirements with ongoing developments in digital governance. The IAPP also hosts dedicated topic pages and community resources to support ongoing implementation, training, and cross-jurisdictional comparisons.
