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The EU AI Act, for a business in Ireland

Some of this Act's dates changed in July 2026, so guidance written before then may give the old ones.

In July 2026 the rules for high-risk AI were put back by sixteen months. The bans and the transparency duties were not. The bans have applied since 2 February 2025 and the transparency duties since 2 August 2026, and these are the ones that reach an ordinary Irish employer.

The articles below keep the two apart. Each one names the article of the law it covers and the date that article starts. A duty with no date is no use to someone deciding what to do this quarter.

A business that only uses ordinary software has few duties under the Act.

Free checkWhich AI Act duties reach you nowGoes through the whole Act and lists only the duties that apply to what you do, each with the article it comes from and the date it starts.
Free checkThe AI Act transparency check (Article 50)The rules for chatbots and AI-generated images (Article 50) have applied since 2 August 2026. Six questions tell you whether they apply to you.

11 articles on this

Start here · EU AI Act
Does the EU AI Act apply to my business?
Three questions decide it. The first asks whether anything you use works out its own outputs instead of following set rules (the Act calls this inferring). AI features inside ordinary software can do that. The last asks whether you use AI for a purpose on the high-risk list in Annex III. If you do not, the high-risk rules do not apply to you unless you build AI into regulated products.14 minute read · 11 sources
AI at work
ChatGPT, Microsoft 365 Copilot or Gemini for a small business: price, training on your data, and who controls what
Microsoft and Google publish Irish prices and say plainly that business data does not train their models. OpenAI's pricing and policy pages could not be read for this comparison, so its column holds only what OpenAI's trust portal and its contract form say, and the portal is written about its Enterprise and Edu plans.6 minute read · 9 sources
EU AI Act
AI agents in a business: what the AI Act and the GDPR already say about software that acts
No law has a separate rulebook for AI agents. The European Commission says the AI Act's existing definitions cover them, and the GDPR applies to any personal data they touch. An agent that talks to customers, decides about people or works with their data meets the same rules as any other AI system. This is where each one applies, and from when.9 minute read · 11 sources
Standards
ISO/IEC 42001, the AI management system standard: what it asks, who certifies it in Ireland, and what it does not prove
ISO/IEC 42001 is a standard for running a business's development or use of AI as a managed system, and NSAI says it is designed to integrate with ISO 27001. A business can follow it without a certificate. A certificate shows that a certification body audited the system against the standard. It is not one of the standards that give a presumption of conformity with the EU AI Act, and the European Commission has said why.8 minute read · 15 sources
AI at work
Microsoft Copilot and the GDPR: what to check before you switch it on
Microsoft's documentation answers most of the GDPR question for you: your prompts and files are not used to train its models, and EU traffic stays in the EU. The risk it points back at you is permissions: Copilot shows each person everything they are already allowed to open.3 minute read · 3 sources
EU AI Act
Your staff use ChatGPT. What the law asks, and a policy to adopt
No law mentions an AI use policy by name. The AI Act asks for AI literacy measures, prohibits a few uses and requires labels on some published content. The GDPR governs any personal data typed into a tool. A one-page policy, set out below, can cover all four.15 minute read · 13 sources
EU AI Act
Who regulates AI in Ireland, and which one is yours
There is no single Irish AI regulator. Fourteen public bodies supervise AI under the EU AI Act (market surveillance authorities). One of them is a new AI Office that coordinates the rest. Which one is yours depends on what your AI is used for, not on what your software is.20 minute read · 19 sources
EU AI Act
AI literacy: a real duty, and nothing you have to buy
The duty applies to any Irish business whose staff use an AI system at work, and it does not require external training or any certificate.8 minute read · 11 sources
EU AI Act
Does your chatbot have to tell people it is AI? Yes, unless that is obvious.
Four duties. Two fall on the provider: your supplier if you bought the system, or you if you built it or had it built and it carries your name. The other two fall on you as the business using it.9 minute read · 6 sources
EU AI Act
Article 25: when using AI makes you its provider
Deployer duties are light. Provider duties are not. Article 25 decides which you are, and it does not ask whether you set out to build anything.10 minute read · 7 sources
EU AI Act
The EU AI Act: what starts on 2 December 2026, and what waits until December 2027
The Digital Omnibus moved the high-risk rules and added two prohibitions. Here is what is in force in Ireland today, what starts on 2 December 2026, what waits until 2 December 2027, and what that means if you use AI at work.24 minute read · 23 sources

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The EU AI Act, for a business in Ireland

11 articles on this

Does the EU AI Act apply to my business?

ChatGPT, Microsoft 365 Copilot or Gemini for a small business: price, training on your data, and who controls what

AI agents in a business: what the AI Act and the GDPR already say about software that acts

ISO/IEC 42001, the AI management system standard: what it asks, who certifies it in Ireland, and what it does not prove

Microsoft Copilot and the GDPR: what to check before you switch it on

Your staff use ChatGPT. What the law asks, and a policy to adopt

Who regulates AI in Ireland, and which one is yours

AI literacy: a real duty, and nothing you have to buy

Does your chatbot have to tell people it is AI? Yes, unless that is obvious.

Article 25: when using AI makes you its provider

The EU AI Act: what starts on 2 December 2026, and what waits until December 2027

What we do about this

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