8 October 2026 4 min read The Optimize Desk team

The EU AI Act for a company of 50 people: what applies to AI in your office, and from when

Three AI Act rules already bind a 50-person office: no emotion reading at work, AI literacy, and AI must say it is an AI. High-risk employment rules apply from 2 December 2027.

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If your company has 50 people and uses AI in the office, three rules of the EU AI Act already bind you: no AI that infers the emotions of your staff (since 2 February 2025), a duty to support AI literacy among staff who use AI (same date), and any AI that talks to customers or staff must make clear it is an AI (since 2 August 2026). The heavy rules for high-risk AI, including AI used in employment decisions, apply from 2 December 2027, after the 2026 omnibus regulation moved that date back from 2 August 2026.

There is no exemption for small companies. The Act reaches anyone who uses an AI system under their authority in the course of business, which it calls a deployer (Article 3). Only the fine changes with size: small and medium-sized companies face the lower of the two ceilings (Article 99).

Which rules already apply to AI in your office?

Rule	Where	Since	What a 50-person company does
No AI that infers the emotions of people at work, except for medical or safety reasons	Article 5(1)(f)	2 February 2025	Do not buy tools that score mood or stress in calls, emails or on camera, including inside ticket analytics you already own
Support AI literacy among staff who use AI	Article 4	2 February 2025	Short training and written rules for the people who use AI tools; the amended text says no specific level has to be guaranteed for any individual
AI that interacts with people must make clear that it is an AI	Article 50(1)	2 August 2026	Phone, chat and email agents say so unless it is obvious; check the setting on every vendor tool
Fines	Article 99	In force	Up to EUR 35 million or 7% of turnover for prohibited practices, EUR 15 million or 3% for other breaches; an SME pays the lower of the two

The dates are the European Commission's official timeline (Commission). The law is Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (EUR-Lex); the article links go to the consolidated text with the 2026 amendments marked.

Which uses of AI at work count as high-risk?

Annex III, point 4, lists the employment uses. Point 4(a) covers recruitment and selection: targeted job advertisements, filtering applications, evaluating candidates. Point 4(b) covers AI "intended to be used to make decisions affecting terms of work-related relationships", promotion or termination, allocating tasks "based on individual behaviour or personal traits or characteristics", and monitoring or evaluating the performance and behaviour of people at work (Annex III).

Article 6(3) takes some tools out: a system that performs a narrow procedural task, or a preparatory task for such an assessment, is not high-risk. The same paragraph closes one door: an Annex III system "shall always be considered to be high-risk where the AI system performs profiling of natural persons" (Article 6). A tool that scores tasks and roles is preparatory; a tool that scores named employees is high-risk, whatever it is called.

From 2 December 2027 a company that uses a high-risk system must use it as the provider's instructions say, assign human oversight to trained people, monitor it, keep its logs for at least six months and, before it goes into service at the workplace, inform workers' representatives and the affected workers (Article 26).

What changed with the 2026 omnibus?

Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 of 8 July 2026 entered into force on 27 July 2026 (AI Act Explorer; Commission). It moved the application date for Annex III high-risk systems from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2027, and for AI built into regulated products to 2 August 2028 (Article 113). It added new prohibitions that apply from 2 December 2026 and rewrote the literacy duty so that companies "take measures to support the development of AI literacy" (Article 4). The transparency rule and the existing prohibitions were not delayed.

What must an employer do when AI changes a role?

Four things. None is new law for a European employer, and all are easy to forget when a vendor promises savings.

Decide about people yourself. Under GDPR Article 22 a person has the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that produces legal or similarly significant effects (GDPR). A dismissal or a change of role decided by software is such a decision. Let the tool assess tasks and roles; a manager decides about the person.
Inform and consult early. In Germany the works council must be informed in good time about the planning of work processes "einschließlich des Einsatzes von Künstlicher Intelligenz", including the use of artificial intelligence, and consulted on the effects (§ 90 BetrVG). In a business with more than 20 voting employees, fundamentally new working methods are a Betriebsänderung that triggers information and consultation (§ 111 BetrVG).
Make the AI say it is an AI on every channel where it meets a customer or a colleague (Article 50).
Keep people's data out of the analysis. Role-level task lists and volumes answer the question. Per-person performance data turns an assessment into monitoring and, from December 2027, into a high-risk use.

Sources

Optimize Desk assesses tasks and roles, never people, and every AI role it runs says that it is an AI: Find out which roles AI can take. Then let it.