What is AI literacy under the EU AI Act?
Article 3(56) of the AI Act defines AI literacy as the skills, knowledge and understanding that let providers, deployers and affected persons make an informed deployment of AI systems and gain awareness of the opportunities and risks of AI and the possible harm it can cause. It is a working capability tied to the systems people actually use, not a qualification. The definition sits in the Act's list of terms, and Article 4 is the duty that attaches to it.
The definition, word for word
The Act says AI literacy means "skills, knowledge and understanding that allow providers, deployers and affected persons, taking into account their respective rights and obligations in the context of this Regulation, to make an informed deployment of AI systems, as well as to gain awareness about the opportunities and risks of AI and possible harm it can cause".
Three parts of that sentence do the work.
- Skills, knowledge and understanding. All three, together. Knowing that a chatbot can invent a citation is knowledge. Checking the citation before it goes to a client is a skill. Understanding is knowing when the check matters.
- Taking into account their respective rights and obligations. Literacy is relative to the role. A provider building a system, a deployer using it, and a person affected by its output each need something different.
- Informed deployment. The Act asks that the people who choose to use a tool understand what they are choosing. It does not ask them to be engineers.
How the definition connects to Article 4
Article 4, as rewritten by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 in July 2026, requires providers and deployers to take measures to support the development of AI literacy among their staff and the other people who operate or use AI systems on their behalf. The measures are to take account of technical knowledge, experience, education and training, and the context the systems are used in. The article now also states that it does not require anyone to guarantee any specific level of AI literacy for any individual.
The duty is to take measures that support that understanding in your own people, in proportion to the tools they use and what they use them for. That is why the European Commission's Q&A on AI literacy sets out four steps that start with a general understanding of AI and end with actions built on an analysis of your organisation's role, its systems and their risks.
What AI literacy is not
It is not a certificate. The Commission's Q&A says there is no need for one, and that organisations can keep an internal record of trainings and other guiding initiatives. It is not a test score; the same Q&A says Article 4 does not entail an obligation to measure the knowledge of AI of employees. And it is not a course on machine learning. A receptionist who uses a scheduling assistant and a recruiter who reviews ranked candidates both need AI literacy, and it looks different for each.
What it looks like in a real organisation
A forty-person firm that uses a general-purpose chatbot for drafting, a CRM with an AI summariser, and an applicant tracking system with a ranking feature has three systems and at least three kinds of user. Proportionate measures for that firm would look different for each kind of user. Every user would learn what each tool does and where it fails. The CRM administrators would also cover what the summariser can and cannot see, and the two people who read candidate rankings would cover what the ranking is based on and what their own review adds. That is the calibration the Commission's four steps describe, and it is what our workshops are built around.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the AI Act, Article 3(56) and Article 4. The definition above is quoted from Article 3(56).
- Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Digital Omnibus on AI, which rewrote Article 4 with effect from 27 July 2026.
- European Commission, AI literacy: questions and answers, for the four steps, the certificate and the testing passages.
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.
