EU AI Act: Part 2 - How are AI systems defined?

The EU AI Act provides a clear distinction between AI systems, categorising them as single-purpose or general-purpose, each with unique characteristics.

Single-purpose AI system or simply "AI System"

AI Systems that are single-purpose are defined as "a machine-based system that is designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment, and that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments".

General-purpose AI System or GPAI

They are based on General-purpose AI Models such as chatGPT. The EU AI Act defines them as "an AI system which is based on a general-purpose AI model and which has the capability to serve a variety of purposes, both for direct use as well as for integration in other AI systems."

The General-purpose AI Models that underpin the GPAI Systems are defined as follows;

"AI model is trained with a large amount of data using self-supervision at scale, that displays significant generality and is capable of competently performing a wide range of distinct tasks regardless of the way the model is placed on the market and that can be integrated into a variety of downstream systems or applications, except AI models that are used for research, development or prototyping activities before they are placed on the market".

Reference:

EU AI Act

Relevant articles: 

EU AI Act: Part 1 - A Brief Overview

EU AI Act: Part 3 - Tune in for part 3 to learn how these AI Systems are further classified based on a risk-based approach for compliance and monitoring.

Disclaimer: This article is intended solely for educational purposes and should not be taken as legal advice.