What the AI Act is
The EU AI Act — Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 — is the EU's common rulebook for artificial intelligence. It's a regulation, not a directive: it applies directly in every member state, including Finland, without waiting for separate national laws.
Its rules phase in over time, and the act reaches full application on 2 August 2026. The basic idea is simple: the bigger the risk an AI use poses to people, the stricter the requirements.
Customers must know when they're talking to AI
Article 50 of the act is about transparency. Its core: people must be told when they're interacting with an AI system, such as a chatbot — unless that's already obvious from the situation.
In practice: if the chat on your website answers customers by itself, your customers need to know that. For most small businesses, this is the part of the act that actually touches daily life — not the heavy high-risk requirements written for things like hiring tools.
Human review changes the picture
The act doesn't treat every use of AI the same way. Transparency obligations differ when content gets substantive human review and a person holds editorial responsibility for it, compared with a machine answering on its own.
The difference is common sense. A chatbot answering by itself is an AI system the customer is conversing with. A reply that a person has reviewed, edited and approved is your business's own message, with AI as the helper — closer to a drafting assistant than a chatbot. What this means for your own disclosures depends on your setup, which is why the note at the bottom of this page matters.
The four risk tiers, briefly
The act sorts AI uses into four tiers:
- Prohibited: certain uses, such as social scoring, are banned outright.
- High-risk: AI in areas like hiring or credit decisions — allowed, but tightly regulated.
- Limited-risk transparency: chatbots and the like — allowed, but people must be told about the AI. Most customer-service chat sits in this tier.
- Minimal risk: most everyday AI, such as spam filters — no new obligations.
Where työ stands
In työ, your customers always talk to a person. AI only drafts a reply, grounded in your business's own knowledge and tone; you or your team review, edit and send every message. Nothing goes out without a human sign-off, and sensitive replies can require two.
We won't tell you that a tool makes your business compliant with the AI Act — don't believe anyone who does. What we can say is this: työ is designed for the human-oversight approach the AI Act rewards. A person decides, the machine assists, and a record is kept.