Article 4: AI literacy, explained

Article 4 asks providers and deployers of AI systems to take measures so that, as far as possible, their staff and other people operating AI on their behalf reach a sufficient level of AI literacy.

The level is not fixed. It is judged against the technical knowledge, experience, education, and training of the people involved, the context the system is used in, and the people or groups it is used on. A marketing team using a writing assistant needs a different level from a team running a tool that screens job applicants.

It does not prescribe a course, a certificate, or a set number of training hours. It sets an outcome: the people using AI understand what it does, where it falls short, and how to use it responsibly.

AI tools are easy to use and easy to over-trust. They produce fluent, confident output that can be wrong, biased, or simply made up. Article 4 is the baseline that makes the rest of the Act work: a person who does not understand a tool's limits cannot oversee it, catch its mistakes, or keep its use within the rules.

It is also the one duty that touches almost every organisation, because almost every organisation now uses AI somewhere, even if only a general assistant for drafting and research.

Everyone who operates AI on your behalf, not only permanent employees. That includes contractors and temporary staff who use the tools in your work. The duty sits with you as the organisation, not with the individual.

The expectation scales with the role. Someone who occasionally drafts emails with an assistant needs general awareness. Someone who relies on a system to inform decisions about people needs to understand its limits, its failure modes, and when to step in.

The AI literacy duty has applied since 2 February 2025, one of the first parts of the Act to take effect, on the same date as the Article 5 prohibitions.

Article 4 does not carry its own headline fine, but it is a real obligation that national authorities can weigh, and it underpins the duties that do carry penalties. An organisation that cannot show its people were equipped to use a high-risk system is on weaker ground everywhere else.

Write a short AI literacy policy that sets out how AI is used in your organisation, and name who is responsible for it.

Give role-appropriate guidance and training: a light briefing for general users, something deeper for anyone operating a higher-risk system.

Cover the specific tools and uses your people actually have, not AI in the abstract. Keep a simple record of who was briefed and when, and refresh it as your tools and uses change.

What each tool is for and what it is not for in your context, and how it handles the data you put in, including what must never be entered, such as confidential or personal data it is not cleared for.

How it can fail: confident wrong answers, bias, and gaps in what it knows. Why a person has to review output before it is relied on, and who to escalate to when something looks off.

It is not a certificate you buy once. It is an ongoing, role-based understanding that you can show you have fostered.

It is not only an IT or legal concern. The people who need literacy are the ones using the tools day to day, across the business.

It is not satisfied by a single acceptable-use line buried in a handbook nobody reads. The test is whether your people actually understand the tools they use.

Veillo generates an AI Literacy Policy from your company details, so you have a documented, dated starting point to adapt and share rather than a blank page. It is general by design and meant to be reviewed for your situation.