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AI Office
Also known as: European AI Office
The European Commission body that supervises general-purpose AI models under the EU AI Act and coordinates the Act's enforcement with national authorities. Its powers to enforce the GPAI obligations, including fines, have applied since 2 August 2026.
- EU AI Act
- European Commission
- GPAI
- enforcement
- AI Board
What it does
The AI Office was set up within the Commission in 2024. It supervises providers of general-purpose AI models: it can request documentation, evaluate models, require corrective measures and, since 2 August 2026, impose fines. It also facilitated the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice and the code on marking AI-generated content, supports the European AI Board of member states, and develops guidelines and templates under the Act.
What the Omnibus changed
The 2026 Digital Omnibus widened its role. The AI Office now has exclusive competence over AI systems built on a provider's own general-purpose model, and over AI in the largest online platforms, with stronger powers of inspection. For most other AI systems, national market surveillance authorities remain the enforcers.
What it means for a deployer
Most organisations will not deal with the AI Office directly. They feel it through what it requires of their model providers: documentation a deployer can ask for, incident reporting and the codes of practice. The gap for a deployer that never asks is inadequate AI vendor due diligence.
Sources
Related Terms
AI Incident
An event in which the development, use or malfunction of an AI system directly or indirectly leads to harm to people's health, critical infrastructure, rights, property, communities or the environment. An AI hazard is an event that could plausibly have led to one. Reporting regimes in the EU and several US states now attach legal deadlines to the most serious cases.
Digital Omnibus on AI
Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the 2026 law that amended the EU AI Act. It deferred the high-risk obligations to December 2027 and August 2028, softened the AI literacy duty, added two prohibited practices, and extended documentation concessions to small mid-cap companies.
EU AI Act
The European Union's regulation of AI systems by risk category, in force since 1 August 2024 and applying in stages. As of October 2026 the prohibitions, the AI literacy duty, the general-purpose model obligations and the Article 50 transparency duties all apply. The 2026 Digital Omnibus, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, deferred the high-risk obligations to December 2027 and August 2028, softened the literacy duty and added two prohibitions. It reaches any organisation whose AI output is used in the EU, wherever the organisation sits.
General-Purpose AI Model
An AI model that displays significant generality and can competently perform a wide range of distinct tasks, however it is placed on the market. Under the EU AI Act its provider has had documentation, copyright and downstream-information duties since 2 August 2025, and a model with systemic risk carries evaluation, adversarial testing, incident reporting and cybersecurity duties on top.