What is a general-purpose AI model (GPAI)?

How the EU AI Act defines it

The term comes from the European Union's AI Act. Under Article 3, a general-purpose AI model is one that:

• displays significant generality
• can competently carry out a wide range of distinct tasks whatever way it is placed on the market
• can be integrated into a variety of downstream systems or applications

Models used only for research, development or prototyping before market release are excluded. A general-purpose AI system is defined separately, as an AI system built on such a model.

The Act sets no numeric test for generality. European Commission guidelines add an indicative one. The Commission says a model qualifies if it was trained with more than 10^23 floating point operations (FLOP, a measure of computing work). It must also be able to generate language as text or audio, or images or video from text. The Commission says this is not an absolute rule.

What providers must do

Article 53 requires providers to:

• keep technical documentation
• give information to companies that build the model into their own AI systems
• maintain a policy for complying with EU copyright law
• publish a summary of the content used for training

Models released under a free and open-source license, with weights and other parameters made public, are exempt from the two documentation duties unless they pose systemic risk.

Under Article 51, a model is presumed to have the high-impact capabilities that mark systemic risk when its training compute exceeds 10^25 FLOP. The Commission's guidance says the provider must then notify it within two weeks, and extra duties apply, including model evaluation, risk assessment and mitigation, incident reporting and cybersecurity protection.

Where things stand in 2026

The obligations have applied since August 2, 2025. Under the Commission's timeline, its enforcement powers, including fines, entered into application on August 2, 2026. The timeline gives models placed on the market before August 2, 2025 until August 2, 2027 to comply. Under Article 101, fines can reach 3% of worldwide annual turnover or 15 million euros, whichever is higher.

A voluntary code of practice, published on July 10, 2025, offers providers one way to show compliance. When checked on October 6, 2026, the Commission's list showed 21 signatories, among them Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Mistral AI and OpenAI. The page said xAI had signed only the safety and security chapter.