Leveraging Promptfoo for EU AI Act Compliance

The EU AI Act, effective from February 2, 2025, represents the first comprehensive legal framework aimed at regulating artificial intelligence systems, particularly those deemed high-risk, across sectors such as healthcare, education, and law enforcement. This regulation applies to all entities developing, using, importing, or distributing AI within the EU, with severe penalties for non-compliance, akin to GDPR. Article 5 of the Act delineates banned AI behaviors, including manipulation, exploitation based on personal traits, emotion inference in sensitive settings, and the use of biometric data for profiling. The text highlights potential misuse scenarios, especially with large language models (LLMs), and emphasizes the importance of implementing controls to prevent harmful AI behaviors. Promptfoo is introduced as a solution to test AI systems against prohibited behaviors by employing harmful generation plugins and custom policies to anticipate and counteract regulatory bypass attempts. Even though full compliance for high-risk systems is not required until August 2026, Promptfoo offers tools to ensure AI systems meet the EU AI Act’s cybersecurity, accuracy, and robustness standards.