The European Commission's powers to supervise and enforce the EU AI Act against providers of general-purpose AI models take effect on August 2, 2026. The underlying obligations have applied since August 2, 2025, but providers were given a one-year adjustment period before Brussels could begin exercising enforcement.
What regulators can now do
From that date the Commission's AI Office gains a defined set of powers. Under Article 91 it can demand technical documentation and other information from model providers. Under Article 92 it can run evaluations to check compliance or investigate systemic risks, and can require providers to grant access to their models for independent expert review.
Article 93 covers corrective measures. The Commission can order a provider to bring a model into compliance, implement risk-mitigation steps, or — in the most serious cases — restrict, withdraw or recall the model from the EU market. Failing to respond to information requests or to grant evaluation access is itself a violation.
The size of the fines
Penalties are steep. Non-compliance can draw fines of up to €15 million or 3% of a provider's total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher. For the largest model makers, the turnover-based figure would run far above the fixed cap, giving the rule real weight against companies with global revenue in the tens of billions.
The Commission has also confirmed that transparency obligations phase in around the same time, including requirements to disclose AI-generated content and to make clear when users are interacting with a chatbot.
New models first, legacy models later
The timeline splits by model age. Providers of general-purpose models placed on the market after August 2, 2025 must be compliant when enforcement begins on August 2, 2026. Models released before that date get an extra year, with a deadline of August 2, 2027. That staggered schedule gives older systems more room, but puts every newly released frontier model squarely under the Commission's supervision from next month.