The EU AI Act is the world's first comprehensive law regulating artificial intelligence, and it classifies AI systems by risk, from prohibited practices through high risk systems to transparency obligations. It applies to providers and deployers placing AI systems on the EU market or affecting people in the EU, wherever the organisation operates, which places Indian AI builders serving European clients directly in scope. The prohibited practice provisions applied from February 2025, general purpose AI obligations from August 2025, and the main high risk system obligations apply from August 2026.
For a company building or deploying AI, the first question is classification, because everything else follows from it. A high risk classification triggers technical documentation, data governance over training data, human oversight measures, and conformity assessment, while lower classifications carry lighter transparency duties.
