It is February 2026. The year of experimentation is over, and the year of enforcement has begun.
For the last two years, Customer Experience (CX) leaders have been told to get ready for the EU AI Act. We attended webinars, downloaded whitepapers, and nodded along to legal experts. It all felt theoretical, or like a problem for the Legal team to solve “later.”
‘Later’ has arrived.
With the August 2026 deadline for high-risk AI systems looming, the conversation has shifted violently. We have moved from legal theory to operational triage. The question is no longer What does the law say?, it is Which of our AI pilots are we killing because we can’t afford the compliance bill?