The Engineer's Guide to the EU AI Act
Guides for engineering and compliance teams that build or deploy AI for the EU market, on the Act's articles, deadlines and fines.
What Is the EU AI Act?
The EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) is the EU's law on artificial intelligence. It sorts AI systems by risk level and sets duties for providers and deployers by level: bans on prohibited practices, and documentation, transparency and human oversight duties for high-risk systems.
Article-by-Article Guides
Basics: deadlines, prohibited practices, GDPR and AI literacy
EU AI Act Deadlines: Timeline From 2024 to 2030
Every application date of the EU AI Act from 2024 to 2030, with the article behind each date, who is affected and the fine levels.
Prohibited AI Practices Under Article 5
The ten AI practices Article 5 bans, who must comply, the narrow exceptions, and fines up to EUR 35 million or 7% of worldwide turnover, whichever is higher.
EU AI Act vs GDPR: What's Different, What Overlaps
How the EU AI Act and the GDPR differ in scope, duties, fines and enforcement, and where they overlap.
Article 4: AI Literacy Duty for Providers and Deployers
EU AI Act Article 4: providers and deployers must take measures to support AI literacy in their staff. It covers AI systems of every risk class, with limited exceptions. Who is affected and where to start.
High-risk systems: classification and provider duties
Article 6: High-Risk AI System Classification
How Article 6 makes an AI system high-risk: the Annex I product route and the eight Annex III areas.
Article 9: Risk Management System for High-Risk AI
EU AI Act Article 9: providers of high-risk AI systems must run a continuous risk management system. What it covers, when it applies, what breaches cost and where to start.
Article 10: Data Governance for High-Risk AI
EU AI Act Article 10: quality criteria and governance practices for training, validation and testing data of high-risk AI systems, and the Article 4a rule for bias correction.
Article 11: Technical Documentation and Annex IV
EU AI Act Article 11: providers of high-risk AI systems must prepare technical documentation before market placement. The nine Annex IV elements, retention and the simplified form for SMEs.
EU AI Act Article 12: Record-Keeping & Logging
Article 12 requires high-risk AI systems to record events automatically. This guide covers what logs must record, how to build them and how long to keep them.
EU AI Act Article 13: Transparency and Instructions for Use
Article 13 requires providers to give deployers instructions for use. This guide lists what they must contain and what deployers do with them.
EU AI Act Article 14: Human Oversight and Stop Buttons
Article 14 requires high-risk AI systems to allow effective human oversight. This guide covers the abilities overseers need, the stop button and common oversight patterns.
EU AI Act Article 15: Accuracy, Robustness and Cybersecurity
Article 15 requires high-risk AI systems to reach appropriate accuracy, robustness and cybersecurity. This guide covers what it requires and common ways to test it.
Article 16: Provider Obligations for High-Risk AI
The 12 provider duties of EU AI Act Article 16: who counts as the provider, when the duties apply and the fines under Article 99(4).
EU AI Act Article 17: Quality Management System
The 13 aspects of the quality management system under EU AI Act Article 17, proportionality for SMEs, the link to conformity assessment and the fines under Article 99(4).
Article 72: Post-Market Monitoring for AI Systems
Article 72 of the EU AI Act: what providers of high-risk AI systems must monitor after launch, the monitoring plan, serious-incident deadlines and fines.
Deployer duties: Article 26 and the fundamental rights impact assessment
Article 26: Deployer Obligations for High-Risk AI
The deployer duties of EU AI Act Article 26: who counts as a deployer, when the duties apply, how they differ from Article 27 and the fines under Article 99(4).
Article 27: Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment
EU AI Act Article 27: which deployers must carry out a fundamental rights impact assessment, what it covers, when it is due and how to notify the market surveillance authority.
Transparency (Article 50) and general-purpose AI models
Article 50: Transparency & Disclosure Requirements
Article 50 of the EU AI Act: who must disclose chatbots, mark AI-generated content and label deep fakes, since when, with exceptions and fines.
Article 53: GPAI Provider Duties
Article 53 of the EU AI Act: the four duties of general-purpose AI model providers, Annex XI and XII documentation, the open-source exemption, dates and fines.
Article 55: Systemic-Risk Duties of GPAI Providers
Article 55 of the EU AI Act: when a general-purpose AI model has systemic risk, the notification within two weeks, the four extra duties, dates and fines.
GPAI obligations: what model providers and builders must do
Four duties for GPAI model providers, four more for systemic-risk models, and what builders on those models must do.
Fines, the cost of missing a deadline and compliance tools
EU AI Act Fines 2026: Maximum Amounts by Violation Tier
The three fine tiers of Article 99, the Article 101 fine for general-purpose AI model providers, the lower amount for SMEs and three worked examples.
Cost of Missing an EU AI Act Compliance Deadline
Which EU AI Act dates have passed, which are still ahead, and what missing a duty costs: fines, corrective measures and an example 12-week plan.
EU AI Act Compliance Tools 2026: Six Types and What to Check
Six types of EU AI Act compliance tools, what each is built for and what to ask the vendor, plus four checks before you choose.
Industry-Specific Guides
EU AI Act Compliance for Healthcare AI
EU AI Act compliance guide for healthcare and medical device AI systems, covering high-risk classification and MDR interplay.
EU AI Act Compliance for HR Tech
EU AI Act compliance for HR technology and AI-powered hiring systems, covering high-risk obligations and bias requirements.
EU AI Act Compliance for Fintech
Which fintech AI the EU AI Act treats as high-risk: credit scoring of natural persons and life and health insurance pricing. Roles, financial-institution rules, dates, fines.
EU AI Act Compliance for Education Technology
Which education AI the EU AI Act treats as high-risk or prohibits: admission, learning outcomes, level of education, test monitoring and emotion inference. Roles, dates, fines.
EU AI Act Compliance for Biometrics
EU AI Act compliance for biometric AI systems, covering prohibited practices, high-risk classification, and real-time identification.
EU AI Act Compliance for Autonomous Systems
Which rules the EU AI Act applies to AI in vehicles, unmanned aircraft, rail, marine equipment, robots and machinery: Annex I Section B, Annex I Section A and Annex III point 2. Roles, dates, fines.
EU AI Act Compliance for Critical Infrastructure
Which critical infrastructure AI the EU AI Act treats as high-risk: safety components in critical digital infrastructure, road traffic and the supply of water, gas, heating or electricity. Roles, dates, fines.
EU AI Act Compliance for Law Enforcement AI
What the EU AI Act says for law enforcement: Article 5 prohibitions, Annex III high-risk entries, provider and deployer duties, dates and fines.
Scanara prepares evidence from your repositories
Scanara reads your connected GitHub repositories and runs rule-based scans for standard AI and machine-learning patterns. It can miss non-standard code. Separately, it generates draft documentation from templates and your assessment answers as evidence for your compliance work. You make the classification decisions.