The claim has been circulating in the trade press since the spring, and it runs roughly like this:
"From 2 August 2026, analysing a customer's emotions during a phone call becomes a high-risk use under the EU AI Act. With it come conformity assessments, human oversight, logging and fundamental rights impact assessments — and fines of up to €15 million or 3% of global turnover."
The date came and went four weeks ago. Nothing happened. The conclusion most people drew from that — that the danger has passed — is the one conclusion that is wrong.
Why the claim stuck
Because it was correct when it was written.
The AI Act's original calendar did set 2 August 2026 as the date the obligations for high-risk systems under Annex III began to apply. Emotion recognition is listed there. The trade press wrote it up all spring, countdown clocks and all, and reported the content accurately.
Then came the Digital Omnibus on AI — Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 — published in the Official Journal on 24 July and in force from 27 July 2026. Five days before the deadline. It moved the Chapter III obligations to 2 December 2027 for stand-alone Annex III systems, and to 2 August 2028 for systems embedded as a safety component in a product.
The change was mostly written up as a technicality, in the middle of the summer holidays. The spring articles were never updated. They are still there, with the wrong date and the right content, and they are what most people have read.
Three dates, and only one of them moved
They are worth keeping apart. They bind different parties, and right now they have entirely different status.
The high-risk obligations: deferred. Conformity assessment, risk management system, logging, human oversight, registration. Applying from 2 December 2027 for stand-alone systems. The deferral covers Chapter III and nothing else.
The transparency duty: not deferred. Article 50(3) requires anyone deploying an emotion recognition system to inform the people exposed to it. It has applied since 2 August 2026 and the Omnibus left it alone. It sits with the organisation using the system, not the vendor building it — unlike the marking duty for synthetic audio, which is the vendor's.
The prohibition: eighteen months old. Article 5(1)(f) prohibits emotion recognition in the workplace and in educational institutions. It has been enforceable since 2 February 2025. The exception for medical or safety purposes is narrow — it covers driver fatigue monitoring, for example, not general logging of how an employee sounds. The fine tier is the highest in the Act: up to €35 million or 7% of global turnover.
One caveat for readers outside the EU. In the EEA states — Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein — the Act is marked EEA-relevant, and the date each individual requirement binds locally is not necessarily the EU date. The order of the three dates does not change either way.
