Has the AI training duty been abolished?

Since the end of June a headline has been doing the rounds that the EU has scrapped the AI training duty. The occasion is Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, known as the Digital Omnibus, in force since 27 July 2026. It does indeed amend Article 4 of the AI Act, the article that puts businesses under a duty regarding the AI literacy of their staff. Only, “amended” is something different from “abolished”.

The two versions

The sentence that triggered the headlines is the last one. It takes the duty to achieve a result out of the article: nobody has to prove that their people have reached a particular level of competence. What the sentence does not do is lift the duty. The first sentence still begins with “shall take measures”.

What has really changed

The standard. What is owed is the measure, not the result. A business that provides training but has one employee who still has not understood it is no longer in breach of Article 4.

The division of roles. Two paragraphs have been added that place duties not on businesses but on the institutions: the Commission and the Member States are to support and facilitate the efforts of businesses, “in particular SMEs”, and the Commission is to publish practical examples; the European Artificial Intelligence Board is to adopt recommendations. For small businesses this is the real good news: there will be templates.

The reasoning the legislator itself supplies. Recital 8 of the amending regulation explains the change, in essence, as follows: a solution that imposes strict obligations in order to secure a sufficient level of AI literacy is not suitable for all kinds of providers and deployers; the data suggest that such obligations cause additional compliance effort, for smaller companies in particular; and AI literacy should be a strategic priority regardless of legal obligations and possible sanctions.

That is remarkably candid: the legislator lowers the pressure and says in the same breath that the matter remains important.

What has not changed

• The duty itself. It has applied since 2 February 2025 to every business that uses AI, including the one where only the bookkeeper uses ChatGPT. There is no exemption for small businesses.
• The definition of AI literacy (Article 3, point 56) is word for word the same.
• Article 26(2): anyone who operates a high-risk system has to assign human oversight to persons who have the necessary competence. The Omnibus has not touched that.
• Liability. If something goes wrong, the question is not whether an authority has carried out a check but whether the business has met its organisational duties. In Germany, the Higher Regional Court of Hamm decided in May 2026 that a company is fully answerable for the false statements of its chatbot and that a general notice saying “AI can make mistakes” offers no protection (judgment of 12 May 2026, case no. 4 UKl 3/25; leave to appeal to the Federal Court of Justice has been granted, so the decision is not yet final). A business that can show in such a case that its people were prepared is in a different position from one that merely claims so.
• Article 50, of which more in a moment.

The record has become more important, not less

That sounds contradictory but is the practical consequence of the rewording. As long as Article 4 demanded a result, one could in theory argue about the result. Now the business owes a measure, and a measure can be tested by one feature only: that it took place. In practice the literacy duty has become a documentation duty.

What belongs in the record is unspectacular: who was trained, when, in what and in which role. The law prescribes no particular certificate; in its questions and answers on AI literacy the European Commission has expressly made clear that an internal record is sufficient. So a business that keeps a list is better placed than one that bought an expensive certificate and did not note who took part.

The duty hardly anyone is writing about

While attention is focused on Article 4, another provision took full effect on 2 August 2026, and it is the tougher one: Article 50, the transparency and disclosure duty.

Anyone writing or speaking with an AI system has to be able to recognise that, at the latest at the first interaction. This affects every business with a chat widget on its website, and it does not help that the widget was installed by an agency: the one who deploys it is responsible. AI-generated images or videos that show real persons or events without being genuine have to be disclosed. Unlike Article 4, breaches of Article 50 are expressly subject to fines.

And unlike the high-risk provisions, which the Omnibus has postponed to December 2027, nothing here applies later. In Germany, the most likely route to enforcement is not the authority either but a warning letter under unfair competition law from competitors or trade associations. Whether a missing AI disclosure counts as a market conduct rule within the meaning of section 3a of the German Unfair Competition Act has not yet been decided by the courts; most of the legal literature considers it likely. What Article 50 requires in detail is set out in a separate article.

What a small business sensibly does now

1. Write down which AI is in the business at all. This is the step almost everyone skips, and without it all the others are worthless. It covers not only the obvious tools but also the chat widget, the image function in the graphics program, the text suggestions in the newsletter tool.
2. Check which of these has to be disclosed. One sentence in the right place settles the most common case.
3. Carry out a measure and keep the record. A short briefing tailored to your own systems, with a list of participants, is worth more than an online course that nobody knows who watched.
4. A brief written rule on what is allowed and what is not. Two pages are enough. They spare you the discussion about whether applicants' data belongs in a chat window.

A business that has all this is not “certified”. There is no such thing for Article 4, and nobody can seriously promise it. It has something better: an answer to the question that gets asked when it matters.