EU AI Act high risk rules officially delayed to dec 2027 after Omnibus deal

[SharpFox]

The EU Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement on May 7th to push the high risk AI obligations from the original August 2nd 2026 deadline all the way to December 2nd 2027 for standalone systems, and August 2028 for high risk AI embedded in regulated products. This is part of the Digital Omnibus package and the press release from the Council got a follow up letter on May 18th formalising the position.

The agreement also adds a fresh prohibition on so called nudifier apps and AI generated CSAM, which takes effect December 2nd 2026. The SME compliance carveout is being extended to small mid caps as well, so companies up to 750 employees and 150 million in revenue now get the lighter touch path.

Industry got most of what it wanted here, civil society is grumbling, and the standards bodies finally have breathing room to actually finish CEN-CENELEC work that was nowhere near ready. The transparency rules still kick in this August though, do not sleep on those

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2026/05/07/artificial-intelligence-council-and-parliament-agree-to-simplify-and-streamline-rules/

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2026/05/07/artificial-intelligence-council-and-parliament-agree-to-simplify-and-streamline-rules/

[Badger27]

Sixteen month delay is basically an admission the original timeline was political theatre

[Aaron]

Good. The standards were not ready and forcing companies to comply with vapour was insane

[SpinorWave]

The nudifier ban is the only genuinely useful thing in this package, everything else is industry capture

[NightOwl]

Anyone reading this thinking it lets them stop their AI governance work is going to regret it badly

[Q]

Brussels caves to lobbyists again, what a shock

[QubitZero13]

Yes the Article 50 obligations stand, only HRAIS got pushed

[Skibidi98]

750 employee SMC threshold is huge, that captures basically every mid market AI vendor in Europe

[DarkEnergy27]

Wait so the August 2026 transparency rules for chatbots and deepfakes are still live yeah

[Hollow Coder]

I do AI compliance for a living and even I think this delay was overdue, the conformity assessment infrastructure simply does not exist yet

[Shane_8]

Watch the watermarking obligation get punted again in twelve months mark my words

[Hollow85]

Funny how the same people screaming about regulation are also screaming about deepfakes ruining elections