High-risk AI system
A high-risk AI system is one that, under the EU AI Act, can significantly affect people’s health, safety, or fundamental rights — such as AI used in hiring, credit, education, or critical infrastructure — and therefore faces the law’s strictest obligations.
Under the EU AI Act, high-risk systems fall into two buckets: AI that is a safety component of regulated products (e.g., medical devices, machinery), and AI used in the sensitive domains listed in Annex III — such as employment, access to essential services, law enforcement, migration, and administration of justice.
High-risk systems must meet obligations including risk management, high-quality data governance, technical documentation, logging, human oversight, accuracy and robustness, and (for some deployers) a fundamental rights impact assessment before use.
Classification is contextual: the same technique can be minimal-risk in one use and high-risk in another. See the European Commission's regulatory framework for the Annex III categories.
