The European Union's AI Act, which began phased enforcement in 2025, introduces comprehensive regulations for AI systems that directly impact hosting providers offering AI infrastructure and services. Understanding compliance obligations is essential for any hosting company serving European customers or processing data in EU jurisdictions.
Compliance Requirements for Infrastructure Providers
The AI Act categorizes AI systems by risk level, with hosting providers potentially falling under obligations as deployers, providers, or both depending on the services offered. Providers of GPU infrastructure for AI training may need to maintain usage logs, while offering AI inference APIs triggers additional transparency and documentation requirements.
High-risk AI applications in areas like biometric identification, critical infrastructure, and employment require hosting providers to ensure adequate logging, monitoring, and human oversight capabilities in their platforms. The Act mandates that AI systems be designed to allow human intervention and override, impacting how inference services are architected.
General-purpose AI models, including large language models, face specific transparency obligations including technical documentation, training data summaries, and copyright compliance measures. Hosting providers offering managed LLM services must understand whether their offerings trigger GPAI model obligations under the Act.