Does Article 4 cover contractors and agencies working for us?
Yes. Article 4 covers people who deal with AI on your behalf, whether or not they are on your payroll. The European Commission's Q&A says that, in general, people working for a service provider or contractor need to have the appropriate AI skills to fulfil the task in question, the same as employees, and that the persons dealing with AI on a deployer's behalf could be a contractor, a service provider or a client.
Who counts
- a freelance copywriter who uses a generative tool to draft your marketing
- a recruitment agency screening candidates for you with a ranking feature
- a managed service provider that configures the AI features in your software
- a contractor embedded in your team using the same tools your staff use
What you owe them
The same appropriate skills for the systems they touch. That does not mean sending every supplier on your internal course. It can mean including them in the relevant session, sharing your acceptable-use policy and the risk notes for the tools they use, or confirming in the contract that they already cover this and asking to see their record.
What to write down
Add them to the inventory by role rather than name where that is simpler, note what guidance they received or where their own record is held, and keep that alongside the rest of your Article 4 record.
Sources
- European Commission, AI literacy: questions and answers, the answers on persons acting on a deployer's behalf and on service providers.
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the AI Act, Article 4.
This is general information about the EU AI Act, not legal advice. Enforcement is proportionate and case by case, and your sectoral regulator may issue guidance that applies to you.
