Story
The European Union's AI Act enters a critical enforcement phase on August 2, 2026, when the European Commission will gain full powers to enforce compliance against general-purpose AI (GPAI) model providers. Under Regulation 2024/1689, the AI Office will have authority to conduct market surveillance, demand technical documentation, and impose fines of up to €15 million or 3% of global annual turnover, whichever is higher, for non-compliance. GPAI model providers have been required since August 2, 2025 to maintain up-to-date technical documentation, provide public summaries of training data using the Commission's mandatory template, and implement copyright policies. The Commission published guidelines in July 2025 clarifying that providers placing GPAI models on the market before August 2, 2025 have until August 2, 2027 to comply. Open-source GPAI providers benefit from limited exemptions, including no obligation to provide documentation to downstream providers, but must still comply with training data summary and copyright policy requirements. European Commission Digital Strategy reported the core details. Latham & Watkins noted additional context. DLA Piper added corroborating details.