AI Governance Briefing — June 9, 2025
Zeph Tech is running assurance reviews for general-purpose AI models that could be designated systemic risk ahead of the EU AI Act’s August enforcement window.
Executive briefing: The EU AI Act empowers the Commission to designate GPAI models as systemic risk when they demonstrate high-impact capabilities or widespread deployment. Those designations trigger Article 53 duties for incident reporting, mitigation, and cooperation. With the August 2025 obligations approaching, Zeph Tech’s governance board is auditing candidate models, validating control coverage, and drafting rapid-response plans for potential systemic-risk notices.
Regulatory checkpoints
- Systemic-risk criteria. Providers must monitor scale, user reach, and potential to cause serious societal harm, notifying the Commission if thresholds are met.
- Mitigation plans. Article 53 requires providers to implement state-of-the-art safeguards, document mitigation effectiveness, and coordinate with national authorities.
- Incident reporting. Providers must report serious incidents within established timelines and support investigations by the EU AI Office.
Operational safeguards
- Score models against systemic-risk indicators—massive user bases, election interference potential, biosecurity misuse—and document findings for the Commission.
- Align mitigation controls with NIST AI RMF Monitor/Manage practices and ISO/IEC 42001 continual improvement requirements.
- Ensure crisis communications, legal, and technical leaders can brief regulators within hours if a designation letter arrives.
Next steps
- Schedule cross-functional war games simulating systemic-risk designation and coordinated regulatory outreach.
- Update Zeph Tech’s customer advisory notes to explain what a systemic-risk classification would mean for deployer obligations.
- Track AI Office updates and stakeholder feedback from the May code-of-practice submissions to refine our approach.