Europe Flips the Switch on AI Governance: EU's AI Office and Act Take Effect

I woke up to August 11 with the sense that Europe finally flipped the switch on AI governance. Since August 2, the EU’s AI Office is operational, the AI Board is seated, and a second wave of the EU AI Act just kicked in, hitting general‑purpose AI squarely in the training data. DLA Piper notes that Member States had to name their national competent authorities by August 2, with market surveillance and notifying authorities publicly designated, and the Commission’s AI Office now takes point on GPAI oversight and systemic risk. That means Brussels has a cockpit, instruments, and air‑traffic control—no more regulation by press release.

Loyens & Loeff explains what changed: provisions on GPAI, governance, notified bodies, confidentiality obligations for regulators, and penalties entered into application on August 2. The fines framework is now real: up to 35 million euros or 7% of global turnover for prohibited uses; 15 million or 3% for listed violations; and 1% or 7.5 million for misleading regulators—calibrated down for SMEs. The twist is timing: some sanctions and many high‑risk system duties still bite fully in 2026, but the scaffolding is locked in today.

Baker McKenzie and Debevoise both stress the practical breakpoint: if your model hit the EU market on or after August 2, 2025, you must meet the GPAI obligations now; if it was already on the market, you have until August 2, 2027. That matters for OpenAI’s GPT‑4o, Anthropic’s Claude 3, Meta’s Llama, Mistral’s models, and Google’s Gemini. Debevoise lists the new baseline: technical documentation ready for regulators; information for downstream integrators; a copyright policy; and a public summary of training data sources. For “systemic risk” models, expect additional safety obligations tied to compute thresholds—think red‑team depth, incident reporting, and risk mitigation at scale.

Jones Day reports the Commission has approved a General‑Purpose AI Code of Practice, the voluntary on‑ramp developed with the AI Office and nearly a thousand stakeholders. It sits alongside a Commission template for training‑data summaries published July 24, and interpretive guidelines for GPAI. The near‑term signal is friendly but firm: the AI Office will work with signatories in good faith through 2025, then start enforcing in 2026.

TechCrunch frames the spirit: the EU wants a level playing field, with a clear message that you can innovate, but you must explain your inputs, your risks, and your controls. KYC360 adds the institutional reality: the AI Office, AI Board, a Scientific Panel, and national regulators now have to hire the right technical talent to make these rules bite. That’s where the next few months get interesting—competence determines credibility.

For listeners building or buying AI, the takeaways land fast. Document your model lineage. Prepare a training data summary with a cogent story on copyright. Label AI interactions. Harden your red‑teaming, and plan for compute‑based systemic risk triggers. For policymakers from Washington to Tokyo, Europe just set the compliance floor and the timeline. The Brussels effect is loading.

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