--- authoritative: false representation: annotated-page publisher: AstroKube methodology: https://ai-act.astrokube.com/about/ source_verified_on: '2026-09-15' site_content_updated_on: '2026-09-15' title: 'Article 26: Obligations of deployers of high-risk AI systems | EU AI Act | AstroKube' description: 'Article 26, EU AI Act: 1. Deployers of high-risk AI systems shall take appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure they use such systems in…' language: en source: https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/ --- 1. [Start](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/) 2. [The law](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/) 3. Article 26 Chapter III · Section 3 · Obligations of providers and deployers of high-risk AI systems and other parties # Article 26 — Obligations of deployers of high-risk AI systems ▼ Primary text, verbatim. Our annotations appear below, visibly separated. [1\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-1) Deployers of high-risk AI systems shall take appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure they use such systems in accordance with the instructions for use accompanying the systems, pursuant to paragraphs 3 and 6. [2\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-2) Deployers shall assign human oversight to natural persons who have the necessary competence, training and authority, as well as the necessary support. [3\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-3) The obligations set out in paragraphs 1 and 2, are without prejudice to other deployer obligations under Union or national law and to the deployer’s freedom to organise its own resources and activities for the purpose of implementing the human oversight measures indicated by the provider. [4\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-4) Without prejudice to paragraphs 1 and 2, to the extent the deployer exercises control over the input data, that deployer shall ensure that input data is relevant and sufficiently representative in view of the intended purpose of the high-risk AI system. [5\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-5) Deployers shall monitor the operation of the high-risk AI system on the basis of the instructions for use and, where relevant, inform providers in accordance with Article 72. Where deployers have reason to consider that the use of the high-risk AI system in accordance with the instructions may result in that AI system presenting a risk within the meaning of Article 79(1), they shall, without undue delay, inform the provider or distributor and the relevant market surveillance authority, and shall suspend the use of that system. Where deployers have identified a serious incident, they shall also immediately inform first the provider, and then the importer or distributor and the relevant market surveillance authorities of that incident. If the deployer is not able to reach the provider, Article 73 shall apply \*mutatis mutandis\*. This obligation shall not cover sensitive operational data of deployers of AI systems which are law enforcement authorities. For deployers that are financial institutions subject to requirements regarding their internal governance, arrangements or processes under Union financial services law, the monitoring obligation set out in the first subparagraph shall be deemed to be fulfilled by complying with the rules on internal governance arrangements, processes and mechanisms pursuant to the relevant financial service law. [6\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-6) Deployers of high-risk AI systems shall keep the logs automatically generated by that high-risk AI system to the extent such logs are under their control, for a period appropriate to the intended purpose of the high-risk AI system, of at least six months, unless provided otherwise in applicable Union or national law, in particular in Union law on the protection of personal data. Deployers that are financial institutions subject to requirements regarding their internal governance, arrangements or processes under Union financial services law shall maintain the logs as part of the documentation kept pursuant to the relevant Union financial service law. [7\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-7) Before putting into service or using a high-risk AI system at the workplace, deployers who are employers shall inform workers’ representatives and the affected workers that they will be subject to the use of the high-risk AI system. This information shall be provided, where applicable, in accordance with the rules and procedures laid down in Union and national law and practice on information of workers and their representatives. [8\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-8) Deployers of high-risk AI systems that are public authorities, or Union institutions, bodies, offices or agencies shall comply with the registration obligations referred to in Article 49. When such deployers find that the high-risk AI system that they envisage using has not been registered in the EU database referred to in Article 71, they shall not use that system and shall inform the provider or the distributor. [9\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-9) Where applicable, deployers of high-risk AI systems shall use the information provided under Article 13 of this Regulation to comply with their obligation to carry out a data protection impact assessment under Article 35 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 or Article 27 of Directive (EU) 2016/680. [10\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-10) Without prejudice to Directive (EU) 2016/680, in the framework of an investigation for the targeted search of a person suspected or convicted of having committed a criminal offence, the deployer of a high-risk AI system for post-remote biometric identification shall request an authorisation, \*ex ante\*, or without undue delay and no later than 48 hours, by a judicial authority or an administrative authority whose decision is binding and subject to judicial review, for the use of that system, except when it is used for the initial identification of a potential suspect based on objective and verifiable facts directly linked to the offence. Each use shall be limited to what is strictly necessary for the investigation of a specific criminal offence. If the authorisation requested pursuant to the first subparagraph is rejected, the use of the post-remote biometric identification system linked to that requested authorisation shall be stopped with immediate effect and the personal data linked to the use of the high-risk AI system for which the authorisation was requested shall be deleted. In no case shall such high-risk AI system for post-remote biometric identification be used for law enforcement purposes in an untargeted way, without any link to a criminal offence, a criminal proceeding, a genuine and present or genuine and foreseeable threat of a criminal offence, or the search for a specific missing person. It shall be ensured that no decision that produces an adverse legal effect on a person may be taken by the law enforcement authorities based solely on the output of such post-remote biometric identification systems. This paragraph is without prejudice to Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Article 10 of Directive (EU) 2016/680 for the processing of biometric data. Regardless of the purpose or deployer, each use of such high-risk AI systems shall be documented in the relevant police file and shall be made available to the relevant market surveillance authority and the national data protection authority upon request, excluding the disclosure of sensitive operational data related to law enforcement. This subparagraph shall be without prejudice to the powers conferred by Directive (EU) 2016/680 on supervisory authorities. Deployers shall submit annual reports to the relevant market surveillance and national data protection authorities on their use of post-remote biometric identification systems, excluding the disclosure of sensitive operational data related to law enforcement. The reports may be aggregated to cover more than one deployment. Member States may introduce, in accordance with Union law, more restrictive laws on the use of post-remote biometric identification systems. [11\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-11) Without prejudice to Article 50 of this Regulation, deployers of high-risk AI systems referred to in Annex III that make decisions or assist in making decisions related to natural persons shall inform the natural persons that they are subject to the use of the high-risk AI system. For high-risk AI systems used for law enforcement purposes Article 13 of Directive (EU) 2016/680 shall apply. [12\.](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/#p-12) Deployers shall cooperate with the relevant competent authorities in any action those authorities take in relation to the high-risk AI system in order to implement this Regulation. This text is meant purely as a documentation tool and has no legal effect. The Union's institutions do not assume any liability for its contents. The authentic versions of the relevant acts, including their preambles, are those published in the Official Journal of the European Union and available in EUR-Lex. [ Recital 91 — interpretive context Given the nature of AI systems and the risks to safety and fundamental rights possibly associated with their use, including as regards the need to ensure proper monitoring of the performance of an AI system in a real-life setting, it is appropriate to set specific responsibilities for deployers. Deployers should in particular take appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure they use high-risk AI… ](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/recital-91/)[ Recital 93 — interpretive context Whilst risks related to AI systems can result from the way such systems are designed, risks can as well stem from how such AI systems are used. Deployers of high-risk AI system therefore play a critical role in ensuring that fundamental rights are protected, complementing the obligations of the provider when developing the AI system. Deployers are best placed to understand how the high-risk AI system will be used… ](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/recital-93/) ## What this means for you In your terms · Deployer obligations Deployer-side logs and monitoring are yours even when the model is someone else's. - Deployer-side log retention ## Obligations derived from this article [Deployer obligationsArt. 26](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?art=art-26) ## Scenarios that touch this provision ### A CV-screening feature in your product Illustrative You are about to ship a feature that ranks and filters job applications for the companies that use your hiring product. ### Your role ProviderDeployer ### Where it lands High risk Deferred 2 Dec 2027 ### Decided by Annex III, point 4(a): systems intended to be used for the recruitment or selection of natural persons, in particular to analyse and filter job applications and to evaluate candidates. What applies - [Risk management system](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-9-risk-management) - [Data and data governance](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-10-data-governance) - [Technical documentation](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-11-technical-documentation) - [Automatic recording of events](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-12-logging) - [Transparency and instructions for deployers](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-13-instructions-for-use) - [Human oversight](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-14-human-oversight) - [Accuracy, robustness and cybersecurity](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-15-accuracy-robustness) - [Conformity assessment](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-43-conformity-assessment) - [EU declaration of conformity and CE marking](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-47-48-declaration-ce-marking) - [Registration in the EU database](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-49-registration) - [Keeping the automatically generated logs](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-19-log-retention) - [Post-market monitoring](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-72-post-market-monitoring) - [Serious incident reporting](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-73-incident-reporting) What you have to be able to produce - Adversarial and injection test suite - Annex IV technical file - Authority notification runbook - Bias examination report - Conformity route decision per system - Dataset cards with provenance - Decision-correlation IDs across services - Declared accuracy levels and metrics - Doc generation wired into CI - Documentation format decision on record - Escalation path for emergent risk - EU declaration of conformity per system - Field-data review cadence - Field-risk signal feed into the register - Foreseeable-misuse analysis per release - Incident classification with regulatory branch - Inference event schema - Instructions for use per system - Kill switch and override, with tests - Living risk register with review cadence - Model performance SLOs with alerts - Named reporting roles - Output metadata deployers can read - Oversight runbook - Oversight UX with override path - Per-run lineage records - Post-market monitoring plan - Registration entries per system - Replay runbook - Representativeness note for the target population - Resource, lifetime and maintenance inputs for the instructions - Restore test on aged logs - Retention budget and DPO sign-off - Retention policy meeting the six-month floor - Risk-to-control mapping in the design docs - Stated assumptions per data set - Tamper-evident log storage - Versioned field telemetry What would change the answer - The Article 6(3) derogation is the only way out, and a system that performs profiling of natural persons never qualifies. Ranking candidates is hard to argue as a narrow procedural task. - Your customers are deployers of this system and carry Article 26 duties, including keeping the logs under their control and telling candidates they are subject to it. - A customer who puts its own brand on your feature becomes its provider under Article 25(1)(a), and you stop being it. [EU Annex III, point 4(a)](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/annex-iii/ "Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act)") [EU Art. 6(2), (3)](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-6/ "Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act)") [EU Art. 16](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-16/ "Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act)") [EU Art. 26](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/ "Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act)") [EU Art. 25(1)](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-25/ "Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act)") A scenario describes a system we made up, not yours. It is not a classification of your system and not legal advice. Pending review by a named legal reviewer. ### An open-weight model on your own cluster, serving an internal copilot Illustrative You pulled open weights, you serve them on your own Kubernetes cluster, and an internal copilot calls them. Nothing leaves your network, and you control every log. ### Your role DeployerProvider ### Where it lands Not classified In force 2 Feb 2025 ### Decided by The model is a general-purpose AI model, which the risk taxonomy does not classify at all. The copilot is the system, and it matches no Annex III use case. What applies - [AI literacy measures](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-4-ai-literacy) - [Disclosing interaction with an AI system](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/explorer/?q=art-50-interaction-disclosure) What you have to be able to produce - Disclosure pattern in the design system - Onboarding notes for AI-touching roles - Reusable disclosure component - Team enablement plan for people operating AI systems What would change the answer - Fine-tune the weights and you may become the provider of the modified model. The Commission’s indicative criterion is a modification using more than a third of the original training compute, which is guidance, not a threshold in the Regulation. - Article 2(12) puts systems released under free and open-source licences outside the Regulation, but never when they are placed on the market as high-risk or under Article 5 or Article 50. - Because you run the model, the logs are under your control, which is the fact that decides who answers Article 19 or Article 26(6) if the system ever becomes high-risk. [EU Art. 3(63), (66)](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-3/ "Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act)") [EU Art. 2(12)](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-2/ "Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act)") [EU Art. 53](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-53/ "Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act)") [EU Art. 26(6)](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26/ "Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act)") [EU Guidelines on GPAI provider obligations, para. 60 Commission interpretation](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/guidelines-scope-obligations-providers-general-purpose-ai-models-under-ai-act "Guidelines on the scope of the obligations for providers of general-purpose AI models under the AI Act") A scenario describes a system we made up, not yours. It is not a classification of your system and not legal advice. Pending review by a named legal reviewer. ## If you would rather not read the law The basics page explains the Regulation's own categories in order: scope, role, tier, date. The engineering view groups the obligations by the platform capability they demand. [Start with the basics →](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/basics/) [Open the engineering view →](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/engineering/) ## About this provision ### Status Upcoming 2 Dec 2027 Moved from ~2 Aug 2026~ ### Regime High-risk ### Binds Deployer ### Type Article · Chapter III · Section 3 ### Amended by Not amended ### Recitals [91](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/recital-91/) [93](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/recital-93/) ### Related [Article 13](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-13/) [Article 19](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-19/) [Article 27](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-27/) [Article 50](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-50/) ### Cited capture regulation-2024-1689/en-2026-08-18.html sha256 8f0b656302f9864c… [Authentic text (EUR-Lex) →](http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/oj) [This version (EUR-Lex) →](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02024R1689-20260727) ### Machine readable [/law/art-26.md](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/law/art-26.md) [/api/law.json](https://ai-act.astrokube.com/api/law.json) ### Found an error? [Write to us →](https://astrokube.com/contact)