AI Act: general-purpose AI model obligations apply
2025-08-02 · Publisher : Union européenne · Domain : Artificial Intelligence
Second stage of the AI Act: since August 2, 2025, providers of general-purpose AI models placed on the EU market must document their models, respect copyright and publish a summary of their training data.
What changes
- Every new general-purpose model must comply when placed on the market; models already on the market have until August 2, 2027.
- Obligations: technical documentation, information for integrators, a copyright policy, a public summary of training data.
- Above 10^25 FLOP, models with systemic risk must be notified and undergo evaluations and enhanced security measures.
- Governance (AI Office, European AI Board, national authorities) and the penalty regime also start to apply.
- The Commission's enforcement and fining powers only apply from August 2026.
On August 2, 2025, one year after Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 entered into force, a second wave of AI Act provisions becomes applicable. It targets providers of general-purpose AI (GPAI) models, that is, the foundation models underlying many systems, as well as the regulation's governance architecture. ### What happened - **Scope**: according to the Commission's guidelines, models trained with more than 10^23 FLOP and able to generate language are presumed to be general-purpose. - **Obligations for all providers**: technical documentation kept available to the AI Office, information for downstream integrators, a policy to comply with EU copyright law, publication of a sufficiently detailed summary of training content using the template provided by the Commission. - **Models with systemic risk** (more than 10^25 FLOP): notification to the Commission, evaluations and adversarial testing, risk mitigation, reporting of serious incidents, cybersecurity. - **Governance and penalties**: the AI Office and the European AI Board are operating, Member States designate their national authorities and the penalty rules become applicable. - **Compliance tool**: the Code of Practice published on July 10, 2025 lets signatories demonstrate compliance. ### Key figures | Item | Deadline | |---|---| | New general-purpose models | August 2, 2025 | | Commission enforcement powers | August 2, 2026 | | Models placed on the market before August 2, 2025 | August 2, 2027 | ### Why it matters For the first time, foundation model providers, mostly American and Chinese, must answer to a regulator on the documentation, copyright and safety of their models. For companies integrating these models, the documentation passed downstream becomes usable input for their own compliance. ### Key takeaways Since August 2025, choosing a model for a project in Europe means checking its provider's documentation and commitments under the AI Act.
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Tags : IA, Régulation, AI Act, Europe, Droit d'auteur