The EU AI Act is now the reality every European company deploying AI has to work within. The good news: for most businesses, compliance is far more manageable than the headlines suggest, if you approach it practically.
Step 1: Inventory your AI systems
You can't govern what you can't see. List every place AI touches your business, including the tools employees adopted on their own. Shadow AI is the biggest blind spot.
Step 2: Classify by risk
The Act works on risk tiers: unacceptable (banned), high-risk (strict obligations), limited-risk (transparency duties) and minimal-risk (most business tools). Most everyday automations fall into the lower tiers, but you have to document why.
Step 3: Document and control
For each system, keep a record of what it does, what data it uses, how it's monitored and who's accountable. Add a lightweight approval step before new AI goes live. That's the backbone of a defensible framework.
Done right, governance isn't a brake, it's what lets you deploy with confidence.