AI training obligation: what Article 4 EU AI Act requires of companies
Article 4 of the EU AI Act requires providers and deployers of AI systems to ensure a sufficient level of AI literacy among everyone who works with AI on their behalf. The rule has applied since 2 February 2025 and affects practically every company that uses AI in daily work.
What the law says
The wording is deliberately open: companies take measures so that their staff have sufficient AI literacy, taking into account technical knowledge, experience, education and the context in which the systems are used.
There is no prescribed number of hours, no official curriculum and no state certificate. What is required is effectiveness, not formality.
Who the obligation affects
Affected are providers who develop AI systems or place them on the market, and deployers who use AI systems under their own responsibility. The vast majority of companies in the DACH region are deployers.
- Teams using Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude in daily business
- Departments building automations with AI components
- Managers deciding on the use of AI
Why box-ticking training is risky
A 45-minute e-learning module produces an attendance list, not competence. If an incident occurs, what counts is not the box ticked in the LMS but whether the people involved could actually assess the risks.
Proof becomes solid when people have worked on real tasks and produced artefacts: prototypes, prompts, guardrails, documented decisions.
What a viable approach contains
A combination of foundational knowledge, role-specific depth and practical application on real processes makes sense.
- Foundations: how it works, limits, data protection, copyright
- Role relevance: what sales, HR, engineering or legal actually need
- Practice: building on your own tasks with your own data
- Documentation: impact report, skills library, proof of competence
