High-Risk AI System
Under the EU AI Act, an AI system used in sensitive domains — critical infrastructure, education, employment, essential services, law enforcement, migration, or the administration of justice — that must meet strict requirements for risk management, data governance, transparency, human oversight, and accuracy before market deployment.
Why It Matters
High-risk classification triggers the EU AI Act's most demanding obligations: conformity assessments, technical documentation, post-market monitoring, and registration in a public database. Misclassifying your system can mean non-compliance by default.
Example
An AI system used by a bank to determine consumer creditworthiness is classified as high-risk. The bank must implement a risk management system, ensure training data is representative and free of known biases, provide transparency to applicants, and maintain human oversight of automated lending decisions.
Think of it like...
High-risk AI systems are like prescription medications — they can be tremendously beneficial, but they require rigorous testing, clear labeling, professional supervision, and ongoing monitoring for side effects.
Related Terms
EU AI Act
The European Union's comprehensive regulatory framework for artificial intelligence, establishing rules based on risk levels. It categorizes AI systems from minimal to unacceptable risk with corresponding compliance requirements.
Conformity Assessment
The process by which a high-risk AI system is evaluated against regulatory requirements before being placed on the market. Under the EU AI Act, this may involve self-assessment by the provider or evaluation by an independent third-party body, depending on the system's use case.
Prohibited AI Practice
AI applications banned outright under the EU AI Act due to their unacceptable risk to fundamental rights. Prohibited practices include social scoring by governments, manipulative AI that exploits vulnerable populations, untargeted facial image scraping, and most real-time biometric identification in public spaces by law enforcement.