The European Commission has begun to use the enforcement powers that became applicable on 2 August 2026, and the instrument it reached for first is the request for information. Eliška Andrš, writing in the AI Policy Bulletin, reports that in late August the AI Office sent such requests to providers of general-purpose AI models, meaning models that can perform many distinct tasks and be built into other systems. The questions concerned model security, external evaluations and post-market monitoring.
What a request for information carries
The Commission’s enforcement page separates two forms of the instrument. A simple request comes from the AI Office. A more formal one is issued by decision of the Commission. The difference sets the exposure. On a simple request, a fine may follow where the reply is incorrect or misleading. On a request issued by decision, a fine may also follow where the provider does not reply, or replies incompletely. For breaches of the obligations on general-purpose AI models the ceiling is EUR 15 million or 3 per cent of total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher. The EU AI Act Newsletter reports that more than 30 companies which had not published a summary of their training data were separately asked about copyright compliance.
What the July implementing regulation permits
Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1755 of 20 July 2026, published in the Official Journal on 21 July 2026, was adopted under Articles 92(6) and 101(6) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689. Article 2(2) sets out the access the Commission may demand for an evaluation: application programming interfaces, internal access, source code, model weights, the infrastructure hosting the model, and the ability to inspect and modify the model’s state during interaction. Article 2(3) also allows the Commission to require the provider to disable logging that would record its access. Article 5(3) allows interim measures before proceedings are opened at all, on grounds of urgency arising from a risk of serious damage to health, safety or other public interests, including an order preventing a model from being made available on the market.
The procedural safeguards are spare. Article 7(2) gives a provider no fewer than 21 days to submit written observations on preliminary findings, and the Annex caps those observations at 50 pages. Article 8(1) grants access to the file only after the preliminary findings have been notified.
ChatGPT enters the Digital Services Act
On 31 August 2026 the Commission designated ChatGPT as a very large online search engine, and Reddit and Roblox as very large online platforms, under the Digital Services Act. Each service had declared at least 45 million average monthly users in the Union, the designation threshold. They have four months from notification, that is until January 2027, to meet the additional obligations, among them assessing and mitigating the systemic risks of the service and its algorithmic systems for illegal content, minors, fundamental rights, electoral processes and public security. The designation also shifts supervision under the AI Act, since the Commission places AI systems integrated into designated platforms and search engines with the AI Office rather than with national authorities.
What to watch
Two things will show whether the requests were a gesture or a start. The first is whether any of them is escalated into a request by decision, the point at which silence itself becomes sanctionable. The second is whether the Commission issues the call for expressions of interest that Article 4(1) of the implementing regulation envisages for its standing list of independent experts, since the evaluation powers in Article 92 are worth only as much as the experts available to exercise them.
Sources: Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1755 of 20 July 2026; European Commission, Enforcement of the AI Act; European Commission, Commission designates ChatGPT, Reddit, Roblox under the Digital Services Act, 31 August 2026; Eliška Andrš, AI Policy Bulletin; The EU AI Act Newsletter, issue 110.