Early Thursday morning, Parliament and Council negotiators reached a provisional deal on amending certain rules within the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act as part of the digital omnibus package.

New deadlines

The law postpones the application of certain parts of the AI Act to ensure that necessary standards and support measures, needed to clarify the application of the rules, are in place. Following the agreement, obligations on high-risk AI systems will apply:

• From 2 December 2027 for AI systems with a high-risk use case (including those involving biometrics, and those used in critical infrastructure, education, employment, law enforcement, and border management)

• From 2 August 2028 for AI systems used as safety components and covered by EU sectoral legislation on safety and market surveillance

The law also delays the application of watermarking obligations on AI-generated content until 2 December 2026 (instead of 2 February 2027 in the Commission proposal). Watermarking…