From 2 August 2025 the EU Artificial Intelligence Act’s obligations for general-purpose models apply, such as those behind ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude.
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 on Artificial Intelligence entered into force in August 2024 and applies in stages. Bans on certain uses arrived in February 2025. On 2 August 2025 the obligations for providers of general-purpose artificial intelligence models began to apply: the large models able to carry out many different tasks, on which assistants and applications are built.
What is required
All providers of such models placed on the EU market must prepare technical documentation, give information to companies that integrate the model into their products, have a policy to respect copyright and publish a sufficiently detailed summary of the content used to train it.
The most powerful models, those that may pose systemic risk because of their capabilities, must also assess and mitigate those risks, undergo testing, ensure cybersecurity and report serious incidents to the European AI Office. Models already on the market before 2 August have until August 2027 to comply.
To ease compliance, the Commission published a voluntary code of practice in July, which most major developers signed. National supervisory authorities also begin operating from that date; in Spain, the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (AESIA), based in A Coruña.
What it means for a business that uses AI
For most companies, which use these models but do not develop them, the change is indirect: they will have more information about how they work and what they were trained on. The toughest obligations for those using AI in high-risk fields such as recruitment, credit or education will come later, and the EU was debating postponing them.
In any case, it is worth knowing which artificial intelligence tools are used in the business, for what and with which data, and training staff, an obligation that has applied since February 2025. Ask your adviser how it affects you.
The rules on artificial intelligence start with those who build it, but they will end up reaching those who use it.
This article is general information. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it does not take anyone’s particular circumstances into account.
