EU AI Act.

The AI Act entered into force on 1 August 2024 and becomes applicable in stages. Since 2 February 2025 the bans on certain practices, such as social scoring or manipulative systems, and the AI literacy rule have applied. Since 2 August 2025 obligations for providers of general-purpose AI models have applied. Since 2 August 2026 the transparency obligations under Article 50 have applied, for chatbots and AI-generated content for example. With the 'Digital Omnibus on AI', amending Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, which entered into force on 27 July 2026, the EU postponed several deadlines: the obligations for stand-alone high-risk systems under Annex III now apply from 2 December 2027, and those for high-risk AI in regulated products under Annex I from 2 August 2028. Systems that generate AI content and were already on the market before 2 August 2026 have until 2 December 2026 for machine-readable marking under Article 50(2). The AI literacy rule was softened: providers and deployers must take measures that support the development of AI literacy, without having to guarantee a particular level. These details are as of 14 October 2026; check the current legal text before making decisions.

The law works with risk classes. Unacceptable risk is prohibited. High risk — AI in recruitment, in credit decisions or in critical infrastructure, for example — is permitted, but with strict obligations on documentation, data quality, human oversight and registration. Limited risk is mainly about transparency: people must be able to tell that they are talking to a chatbot, and deepfakes and certain AI-generated content must be labelled. Minimal risk, such as spam filters, carries no particular obligations.

For Swiss companies the regulation is relevant if they offer AI systems in the EU or if the output of their AI is used in the EU. An online shop with a chatbot serving customers in Germany therefore falls under the transparency obligation. A purely internal application with no EU link generally does not.

Switzerland has no AI Act of its own. On 12 February 2025 the Federal Council decided to ratify the Council of Europe's AI Convention and to make the necessary adjustments as far as possible sector by sector in existing laws, supplemented by non-binding measures. According to the federal government, the consultation draft is due by the end of 2026; it is likely to be years before a law applies. Until then, AI in Switzerland is governed mainly by the Data Protection Act, which according to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) applies directly to AI-supported data processing, and by the rest of existing law. This entry is a general overview as of 14 October 2026, not legal advice.