---
title: Is our AI system high-risk under the EU AI Act?
source: https://rubradigital.com/answers/is-my-ai-system-high-risk-under-the-eu-ai-act
site: Rubra Digital
description: How the EU AI Act risk tiers work, which use cases count as high-risk under Annex III, and what obligations attach at each level.
updated: 2026-07-20
topic: governance
also_asked: What counts as high-risk AI in the EU? | Does the EU AI Act apply to chatbots? | What are the EU AI Act deadlines?
---

# Is our AI system high-risk under the EU AI Act?

**Summary:** High-risk classification under the EU AI Act follows the use case, not the technology. Annex III lists the high-risk categories: biometrics, critical infrastructure, education and vocational training, employment and worker management, access to essential private and public services including creditworthiness and insurance pricing, law enforcement, migration and border control, and administration of justice. An internal knowledge assistant is normally minimal or limited risk, carrying mainly transparency obligations. The same underlying technology used to screen job applicants is high-risk. Classify each use case separately and document the reasoning, because the reasoning is what you have to defend.

_Engineering guidance, not legal advice. Your counsel should own the legal
classification; I help produce the technical evidence behind it._

## The four tiers

**Unacceptable risk, prohibited.** Social scoring by public authorities,
manipulative techniques exploiting vulnerabilities, untargeted scraping of
facial images to build recognition databases, emotion inference in workplaces
and schools, and certain biometric categorisation. These have been prohibited
since February 2025.

**High risk, the substantive obligations.** Two routes in. Annex I covers AI as
a safety component of products already subject to EU product legislation such as
medical devices, machinery, vehicles and lifts. Annex III lists standalone
high-risk use cases:

- Biometric identification and categorisation
- Critical infrastructure management and operation
- Education and vocational training: admission, evaluation, proctoring
- Employment and worker management: recruitment, screening, promotion, task
  allocation, monitoring
- Access to essential private and public services: creditworthiness, benefits
  eligibility, emergency dispatch, life and health insurance pricing
- Law enforcement
- Migration, asylum and border control
- Administration of justice and democratic processes

There is a narrowing provision: a system in an Annex III area may fall outside
high-risk if it only performs a narrow procedural task, improves the result of a
previously completed human activity, or does preparatory work, but not if it
profiles individuals. Relying on this requires documented assessment, not an
assumption.

**Limited risk, transparency.** Chatbots must disclose that a user is
interacting with an AI system. Synthetic image, audio, video and text must be
marked as artificially generated in machine-readable form. Deepfakes must be
disclosed. Most customer-facing assistants land here.

**Minimal risk.** Everything else. No mandatory obligations. Most internal
productivity tooling sits here.

## Applying it honestly

The question "is my RAG system high-risk?" has no answer. The system is not the
unit of classification. The use case is.

One retrieval platform inside a company might simultaneously power:

- An HR policy assistant for staff. **Limited risk**, disclosure only
- A CV screening tool for recruiters. **High risk**, Annex III employment
- A customer support assistant. **Limited risk**, disclosure
- A credit memo drafting aid. **Likely high risk**, creditworthiness

Same infrastructure, four different classifications. Inventory by use case.

## What high-risk actually requires

Risk management across the lifecycle (Art. 9); data governance covering
provenance, representativeness and bias examination (Art. 10); technical
documentation to Annex IV (Art. 11); automatic logging (Art. 12); transparency
and instructions for use (Art. 13); effective human oversight (Art. 14);
accuracy, robustness and cybersecurity with declared metrics (Art. 15); a
quality management system (Art. 17); conformity assessment and CE marking; and
registration in the EU database.

That is a substantial programme. It is also, for the engineering half, largely
the same evidence a well-run evaluation and observability practice already
produces.

## Timeline

In force since August 2024, applying in stages: prohibitions and AI literacy
from February 2025, general-purpose AI model obligations from August 2025, the
main Annex III high-risk obligations from August 2026, and Annex I embedded
systems from August 2027.

The Commission has proposed adjustments to parts of this schedule, so confirm
the current position with your counsel before planning around specific dates.

## Extraterritorial reach

The Act applies if you place a system on the EU market, put it into service in
the EU, **or** if the system's output is used in the EU, wherever your company
is established. That final limb catches a large number of US and Canadian
companies serving European customers who assume they are out of scope.

---

Source: https://rubradigital.com/answers/is-my-ai-system-high-risk-under-the-eu-ai-act
Rubra Digital. Independent LLM and RAG consulting for regulated and document-heavy organisations in Europe and North America.
Contact: hello@rubradigital.com