EU AI Act

The European Union's landmark regulation establishing a comprehensive legal framework for AI, adopted in 2024 and entering into force in August of that year. The EU AI Act classifies AI systems across four risk levels, from minimal to unacceptable, and imposes requirements proportionate to that risk, including transparency obligations, conformity assessments, and outright prohibitions on certain practices such as social scoring and subliminal manipulation. It is the world's first binding horizontal AI regulation, and is expected to set a global standard much as the GDPR did for data protection.
See also: digital services act, AI governance, AI auditing.