Is your AI system illegal in the EU?

Posted by pbacdf 20 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by tuhgdetzhh 19 hours ago

The answers is: likely yes, but the solution is to become the market leader now and pay the fines later. This buisness strategy has worked out very well for the magnificent 7.

Comment by pr337h4m 19 hours ago

You shouldn't care - especially if you're not located in the EU.

Comment by rspoerri 19 hours ago

The AI Act applies to you if:

- You provide AI systems used in the EU (regardless of where you’re based)

- You import or distribute AI systems in the EU

- You use AI systems in your business operations in the EU

In other words: if your AI touches the EU market in any way, you’re covered. Anytime an EU user consumes your product, you’re accountable.

Comment by hackingonempty 15 hours ago

Same with Thailand's lese majeste laws. Better hope nobody on your site writes "Vajiralongkorn the King of Thailand is an impotent jerkface."

Comment by greyface- 18 hours ago

> The AI Act applies to you [...] regardless of where you’re based

By what mechanism? Extradition?

Comment by int32_64 19 hours ago

>regardless of where you’re based

This isn't true.

Comment by ronsor 19 hours ago

Not once the GRANITE Act arrives.

Comment by neuronexmachina 19 hours ago

As far as I'm aware that's currently just a blog post from the Kiwi Farms lawyer, not a bill.

Comment by erispoe 19 hours ago

The New Hampshire proposed state law?

Comment by CamperBob2 18 hours ago

Sounds like an EU problem to me.

Comment by cr125rider 19 hours ago

If the EU tried to innovate as hard on technology as they did regulations, imagine how far they’d be…

Comment by troyvit 18 hours ago

Along the same lines, if the US tried to innovate as hard on regulations as they do on technology maybe we wouldn't be destroying the world.

Comment by nradov 17 hours ago

Citation needed. I just checked and the world is still intact.

Comment by zero-sharp 16 hours ago

You have to leave your room first.

Comment by politelemon 13 hours ago

Comparing the two, Europe is in a pretty good place right now thanks to its regulations. I'm glad it isn't as "far" and there are still some vestiges of treating people as humans.

Comment by lm28469 12 hours ago

Meanwhile thousands of Americans don't have access to lead free running water, your public transportation system is about as good as ours from 150 years ago, parents have to be back in the office instantly after having a baby, if you don't have insurance a cancer will bankrupt you, your average lifespan is going down, &c.

Keep your llms and iphones, we're more than fine on our side lmao

Comment by saubeidl 19 hours ago

This trope is tiring.

* We're leading the world in fusion research. https://www.pppl.gov/news/2025/wendelstein-7-x-sets-new-perf...

* Our satellites are giving us by far the best understanding of our universe, capturing one third of the visible sky in incredible detail - just check out this mission update video if you want your mind blown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXCBFlIpvfQ

* Not only that, the Copernicus mission is the world's leading source for open data geoobservation: https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/

* We've given the world mRNA vaccines to solve the Covid crisis and GLP-1 antagonists to solve the obesity crisis.

* CERN and is figuring out questions about the fundamental nature of the universe, with the LHC being by far the largest particle accelerator in the world, an engineering precision feat that couldn't have been accomplished anywhere else.

Innovation isn't just about the latest tech fad. It's about fundamental research on how our universe works. Everyone else is downstream of us.

Comment by throwaway091025 18 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by mhitza 18 hours ago

A comment that's vague, inflammatory, confrontational, and not at all related to the parent comment.

Comment by ls612 18 hours ago

He's not wrong though. A Europe that has to be responsible for its own defense either has to substantially reform its economy and society, or rely on France with its ASMPA doing the geopolitical equivalent of a drunk guy waving a knife around saying "stay away!".

Comment by mhitza 18 hours ago

He's not right either because he makes large vague claims. If we want to discuss it on clear subjects.

The "free" Europe has, and always will, thank the US for their help during WW2.

The US didn't protect us until now, because there was nothing they had to protect us from. US pulled it's allied NATO members into war in Iraq, if we're tallying things up.

With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, both the EU and the US came to aid because a sovereign, close to EU, nation is invaded. No one was forced to do so. It's a matter of adhering to principles, that in theory are, shared by the "western" countries.

Realistically the US would have to jump to our aid if Russia's attempts outreach their Ukraine war. But that is because that's part of the deal we all made when becoming members of NATO.

And in terms of "subsidizing". That's the most outlandish claim, the US military industrial complex is so large for a reason. It's due to benefitting directly from the international government contracts, the technology it's building and selling (let's leave aside the shady and corrupt aspects of it for this topic)

The small amount of investment spent on military by European NATO members is a fair claim, but let's not kid ourselves, the grander scope of such spending will, and is going, towards US military tech. In a sense having higher spending is all about pushing more money to the US.

Comment by ls612 17 hours ago

And if the US doesn't jump to your aid? If in 2028 Trump goes "you guys had six years to prepare and pissed it away, why should we bail you out?" what can Europe do? They could certainly try putting together a multinational European army and taking it into combat but I doubt there is much political will for that in France or Britain, who crucially possess a lot of the air and seapower.

Comment by mhitza 17 hours ago

> And if the US doesn't jump to your aid?

Pretty banal answer, countries will "just" fight.

Even without NATO, the EU countries already have a defensive pact.

Which as a sidenote is why the dismantlement of EU looks like appealing proposition to both Russia, and the US (for different reasons).

The US would make such a war easier, and fewer lives would be lost, given it's tech, and intelligence network. With or without the US, Russia would lose such a war.

Only way nukes play into it is if a shithead like Putin says "fuck it", seals himself in the bunker and hits the nukes. But then we are all cooked, whichever country does that, since mutual assured destruction comes into play.

In terms of political and societal effects, really interesting question worth pondering about. How would the other NATO member countries retaliate if the US wouldn't join in defense. That would be a big betrayal, so I hope that at the very least all US assets are seized, and US companies nationalized across the EU.

Comment by saubeidl 18 hours ago

I feel like the madman with nukes approach would probably be enough - just ask North Korea if they've been invaded lately ;-)

Comment by kbelder 17 hours ago

It wasn't the nukes that kept them safe. It was artillery. But the principle of mutually assured destruction is the same.

Comment by ls612 18 hours ago

Europe as a theme park/museum with nukes actually is kinda funny to me as an American.

Comment by blitzar 18 hours ago

Without the United States starting wars all over the world, the military support of the United States would not be needed.

Comment by nradov 17 hours ago

Who was it that invaded Ukraine? Who provided the bulk of protection to Europe during the Cold War? Hmmm...

Comment by mopsi 17 hours ago

  > Whatever social niceties you have are thanks to somebody else protecting you and subsidizing your protection.
Now more than ever, seems like it was just smoke and mirrors all along.

Comment by bgwalter 18 hours ago

That is X propaganda. The U.S. actively prohibits additional EU states getting nuclear weapons and does not really want a super strong EU. The U.S. profits from the military strength and "protection" with an overvalued dollar and people irrationally buying U.S. bonds.

The EU spends at least three times as much on defense as Russia. But hey, perhaps it should spend EUR 1 trillion and get active in the Middle East again, after the U.S. has kicked it out in the Suez crisis.

Comment by josefritzishere 19 hours ago

This is not sound legal advice. Even Elon learned a lesson about that recently.

Comment by saubeidl 19 hours ago

Unless you want to be able to sell to a market twice as big as the US, of course.

Comment by unmole 18 hours ago

This is innumerate bordering on the delusional.

Comment by saubeidl 14 hours ago

The EU consists of roughly 500M well-off consumers, the US of roughly 300M.

Maybe not quite double, but almost.

Comment by pianom4n 14 hours ago

And a GDP 2/3 the size. And way less than that by disposable income.

Even users from "rich" EU countries are worth ~30% of a US user to most companies.

Comment by lm28469 12 hours ago

So what? Even people living in poor EU countries buy iphones, use windows, watch Netflix

If the market was at best 1/3rd of the US no one would bother implementing all these regulations

Comment by unmole 10 hours ago

And yet Apple, Microsoft and Netflix make significantly more revenue from the US than the EU. It's almost as if the EU is not actually a bigger market.

Comment by saubeidl 3 hours ago

Or maybe their products just aren't that compelling ;-)

Comment by saubeidl 14 hours ago

Doesn't matter. Rich enough to afford most products, as pretty much the only market other than the US. And more people. Biggest addressable market for most things.

Comment by erispoe 19 hours ago

Virtually everyone complies with GDPR.

Comment by graemep 17 hours ago

The definition of AI is a lot broader than LLMs, and probably a lot broader than machine learning. From Recital 12

> The techniques that enable inference while building an AI system include machine learning approaches that learn from data how to achieve certain objectives, and logic- and knowledge-based approaches that infer from encoded knowledge or symbolic representation of the task to be solved.

That is just a snippe t and I do not know how to interpret it as a whole but it sound as though it atleast extends to expert systems and genetic algorithms? Prolog maybe?

Comment by bdangubic 19 hours ago

I don't live in EU - boom - problem solved

Comment by saubeidl 19 hours ago

But the world's largest market of wealthy customers does.

Might still be a problem.

Comment by awei 18 hours ago

The EU represents about 24% of the global Saas market for example. (95 billion in 2024 / global SaaS market in 2025 is ~ $408 billion). For comparison, North America leads globally at around 43-50% market share)

Comment by saubeidl 18 hours ago

The EU represents around 500 million wealthy consumers compared to the US's around 300.

Comment by unmole 18 hours ago

Yeah, which is why the EU has a much larger GDP. Global companies make significantly more revenue in the EU than in the US. And of course the EU economy is growing much faster than the US and doesn’t face any demographic headwinds.

Oh, wait.

Comment by saubeidl 15 hours ago

That is completely orthogonal to my point.

You can only sell so many iPhones in the US until the market is completely saturated. A market of twice as many people that can afford them sure is tempting.

Comment by bdangubic 13 hours ago

maybe it’d be cool if this EU market with all these people can find a few smart ones to gang up together and form a company that serves EU people and complies with whatever EU dreams up on any given day - boom - problem solved :)

Comment by lm28469 12 hours ago

It's quite amazing how arrogant Americans are despite being a thing for like 10 generations, and how brainwashed they are into believing regulations are bad, to the point of being borderline enraged by the fact that the EU exists. You might want to open a few history books, or books in general, and look up the history of your all American inventions

Comment by bdangubic 12 hours ago

cool mate, you should then enjoy your inventions and ingenuity from Greek Gods and stuff and maybe read a book or two on AI by Plato :-) Too funny (and I am European)

Comment by KoolKat23 18 hours ago

The post makes quite the leap imo. That list is nuanced and basically it should not make a judgment, not what they say.

Comment by mvanbaak 19 hours ago

The article doesnt link to a single source. Missed chance

Comment by Manfred 18 hours ago

It links to annex 3, and you can find everything at https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/

Comment by unstatusthequo 19 hours ago

What about all the AI meeting recording bots that are constantly joining meetings (sometimes even privileged communications in legal matters) or those where two party consent isn’t given? It seems like just nobody cares that this is an issue and it’s becoming acceptable to just violate confidentiality, privilege, and recording laws because “convenience.”

Comment by cboyardee 19 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by Lukas_Skywalker 19 hours ago

Do you care to elaborate or write down some arguments?

Comment by lores 19 hours ago

Generally, they're on the lines of "regulations hurt my capacity to make unlimited money at whomever's in my way's expense.", except with less candidness.

Comment by janice1999 19 hours ago

Temporarily embarrassed digital feudal lords.

Comment by 19 hours ago