EU AI Act | General-Purpose AI

An AI model:

• That displays significant generality; and
• Is capable of competently performing a wide range of distinct tasks; and
• That can be integrated into a variety of downstream systems or applications.

AI models with at least a billion parameters trained with a large amount of data using self-supervision at scale should generally be considered as displaying significant generality and competence to perform a wide range of distinctive tasks.

A general-purpose AI model meeting any of the following criteria will be classified as presenting systemic risk:

• It has high impact capabilities evaluated on the basis of appropriate technical tools and methodologies, including indicators or benchmarks (which is presumed where the cumulative amount of compute used for its training measured in floating point operations (FLOPs) is greater than 10^25); or
• The European Commission decides the model has capabilities or impact equivalent to those identified above based on the criteria listed in Annex XIII, including number of parameters of the model; quality or size of the data set (e.g., measured through tokens); the amount of compute used for training the model, measured in FLOPS or using other variables (e.g., estimated cost of training, time required for training or energy consumption); input and output modalities; benchmarks and evaluations of capabilities of the model; high impact on the internal market due to reach (presumed when it has been made available to at least 10k registered business users established in the EU); and number of registered end-users.

Providers of General-Purpose AI Models Must:

• Create and keep updated technical documentation of the model (elements set out in Annex XI), to be provided upon request to the AI Office and national competent authorities (unless the model is released under a free and open-source license meeting certain criteria)
• Create, keep updated, and make available information and documentation of the model (elements set out in Annex XII) to providers of AI systems intending to integrate the model into their AI systems (unless the model is released under a free and open-source license meeting certain criteria)
• Put in place a policy to respect EU copyright laws and in particular identify and respect reservation of rights regarding scraping in the Copyright Directive
• Create and make publicly available a summary of the content used for training the model according to a template to be provided by the AI office

Providers of General-Purpose AI Models presenting systemic risk must also:

• Conduct a classification exercise and notify the AI office that the model qualifies as a general-purpose AI model with systemic risk
• Perform model evaluations in accordance with standardized protocols and tools reflecting the state of the art
• Assess and mitigate possible systemic risks that may stem from the development, the placing on the market, or the use of the model
• Track, document and report information about serious incidents and corrective measures without undue delay to the AI Office, and, as appropriate, to national competent authorities
• Ensure an adequate level of cybersecurity protection for the model and its physical infrastructure