Key Issues

As it winds its way through the EU legislative process before becoming law, there are a number of points of contention with the AI Act that may evolve. The following section highlights some of the AI Act’s current key issues and the recitals that are relevant to that matter.

Fines/Penalties Conformity Assessment and Self-Assessment Risk-Based Approach Human Oversight Transparency Obligations Interplay with GDPR

The six issues, at a glance

Each issue below is a question that recurs in practice rather than a chapter of the Regulation. Every one links to the governing provisions, so a reading can be checked against the text.

EU AI Act key issues and governing provisions
Issue	What it decides	Provisions
Fines/Penalties	The three EU AI Act penalty tiers explained: EUR 35m or 7% of turnover for prohibited practices, EUR 15m or 3% for most breaches, and how authorities set a fine.	Article 99 Article 100 Article 101
Conformity Assessment and Self-Assessment	When a provider may self-assess a high-risk AI system under Annex VI and when Annex VII requires a notified body, plus what each conformity route involves.	Article 43 Article 40 Annex VI Annex VII
Risk-Based Approach	How the EU AI Act sorts systems into prohibited, high-risk, transparency-risk and minimal-risk tiers, and how to work out which category a system falls into.	Article 5 Article 6 Annex III Article 50
Human Oversight	What Article 14 human oversight requires in practice: who must be able to intervene, stop or override a high-risk AI system, and the competence they need.	Article 14 Article 26 Article 13
Transparency Obligations	Article 50 transparency duties in full: telling people they are dealing with AI, machine-readable marking of synthetic content, and labelling deepfakes.	Article 50 Article 13 Recital 133
Interplay with GDPR	Where the EU AI Act and the GDPR overlap and where they differ: legal bases, DPIAs and fundamental rights impact assessments, and what to do about both.	Article 2 Article 10 Article 26 Article 27

Reading these pages

The commentary on each issue page was written while the Regulation was still moving through the EU legislative process, and it is kept as an archive of that position. Article numbers, penalty figures and dates have all changed since. Each page flags where its text diverges from the adopted and amended Regulation, and links to the current provision so the two can be compared.

For the position under the text as it stands today, start with the implementation timeline and the Digital Omnibus changes.