Beware! The AI Act Can Also Apply to Your AI Research Practices

TL;DR

This paper highlights that the EU AI Act's regulations could impact AI research practices more than commonly recognized, urging for clearer guidelines and legal certainty to prevent hindering scientific progress.

Contribution

It provides an accessible overview of the AI Act's applicability to research, analyzes current exceptions, and proposes modifications and recommendations to better protect researchers.

Findings

AI Act can apply to research practices

Current exceptions often do not cover modern AI research

Recommendations for legal clarity for researchers

Abstract

The EU has become one of the vanguards in regulating the digital age. A particularly important regulation in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) domain is the EU AI Act, which entered into force in 2024. The AI Act specifies -- due to a risk-based approach -- various obligations for providers of AI systems. These obligations, for example, include a cascade of documentation and compliance measures, which represent a potential obstacle to science. But do these obligations also apply to AI researchers? This position paper argues that, indeed, the AI Act's obligations could apply in many more cases than the AI community is aware of. In our analysis of the AI Act and its applicability, we contribute the following: 1.) We give a high-level introduction to the AI Act aimed at non-legal AI research scientists. 2.) We explain with everyday research examples why the AI Act applies to research. 3.) We analyse the exceptions of the AI Act's applicability and state that especially scientific research exceptions fail to account for current AI research practices. 4.) We propose changes to the AI Act to provide more legal certainty for AI researchers and give two recommendations for AI researchers to reduce the risk of not complying with the AI Act. We see our paper as a starting point for a discussion between policymakers, legal scholars, and AI researchers to avoid unintended side effects of the AI Act on research.