General-purpose AI (GPAI)
General-purpose AI (GPAI) under the EU AI Act is an AI model trained on broad data that shows significant generality and can perform a wide range of distinct tasks, such as a large language model behind a chatbot. GPAI provider obligations under Articles 53 to 55 have applied since 2 August 2025.
GPAI models and systemic risk
The EU AI Act treats general-purpose AI models separately from AI systems. All GPAI model providers must keep technical documentation, supply information to downstream providers who build on the model, put a copyright policy in place, and publish a summary of training content (Article 53). A smaller set of the most capable models is classified as GPAI with systemic risk and faces extra duties under Article 55, including model evaluation, adversarial testing, incident tracking, and cybersecurity protection. The Act uses a compute threshold as one indicator of systemic risk.
What it means for deployers
Most SMBs do not build GPAI models, but many deploy products built on them, such as assistants and copilots. If you use a GPAI-based tool in a high-risk context, your deployer duties under Article 26 still apply, and the AI-literacy obligation under Article 4 has applied since 2 February 2025 regardless of which model sits underneath.
Last reviewed June 2026 by the ComplyAgent team.
See also our EU AI Act compliance guide, ISO/IEC 42001 and NIST AI RMF, or browse the full glossary.