AI Act for small businesses: why the EAA exemption won't save you

Short answer. No, being small does not exempt you. The European Accessibility Act has a micro-exemption; the EU AI Act does not. If you run a chatbot or show AI content, the notification duty of Article 50 applies from 2 August 2026, whether you are a sole trader or publicly listed.

Does the AI Act apply to small businesses and sole traders?

Yes. The AI Act for small businesses works differently from most EU rules: there is no turnover or headcount threshold on the transparency obligation. The law looks at what your AI does, not at how big you are.

What does count is your role. The law splits parties into providers (who build AI, such as OpenAI or your chat vendor) and deployers (businesses that put someone else's AI to use). A sole trader with an AI chatbot from Shopify, Intercom or Tidio is a deployer, and deployers carry a notification duty too, the moment their AI is visible to visitors. You do not need to write a single line of code to fall under it.

The EAA exemption that won't save you: micro versus AI Act

This is where it often goes wrong. Many small and medium businesses read up on the European Accessibility Act and took away one reassuring line: micro-enterprises are exempt. That is true, but only for that law, and only for services.

The EAA micro-exemption is tightly defined:

• Fewer than 10 staff, and
• an annual turnover or balance-sheet total under 2 million euros.

Both conditions at once. If you sit below that as a service provider, you do not have to meet the accessibility requirements yourself.

The AI Act has no such escape. No 10-staff line, no 2-million threshold, no micro-exemption. The very business that felt safe under the EAA still falls under Article 50's notification duty the moment it runs an AI chatbot or shows AI text. Two laws, two logics: the EAA scales with your size, the AI Act hangs on your AI.

What a micro-enterprise actually has to do under Article 50

The duty is manageable, even for a small team. Three things matter for most websites:

• Chatbot notice. If a visitor talks to AI, they must know it no later than first contact. A clear notice in or above the chat window is enough; buried in your terms it is not. What that notice must say is covered in our separate piece on whether your chatbot has to say it is AI.
• Marking AI content. Text, images or audio created or edited by AI must be marked, machine-readably, as AI output. For generative systems that were already running before 2 August 2026, there is a grace period until 2 December 2026.
• Labelling deepfakes. Images, audio or video that look real but were made by AI must be visibly labelled as such.

If you first want to know whether your site falls under it at all, walk through the checklist for businesses.

The fine does not scale down with your size

Enforcement offers no small-business discount either. Breaching the transparency obligation carries fines of up to 15 million euros or 3% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher, enforceable by the national supervisory authority. For a smaller business the turnover figure usually weighs less, but the fixed 15-million ceiling stands undiminished.

Something is also in play from before 2026. AI literacy (Article 4) has applied since 2 February 2025: anyone working with AI must understand enough about it. No exam, but demonstrable basic knowledge, matched to how you deploy AI. For a small team, a short, documented explanation of what your AI can and cannot do covers most of it.

What you as an SME can arrange in an hour

Three steps get you a long way: record which AI you show (chat widget, AI text, AI images), check that the notice on your chatbot is switched on, and mark the AI content you show the public. That overview becomes your evidence towards a supervisory authority.

That is exactly what the AI transparency check from Seviranta sets up. We detect which chat widget runs on your site; whether it is AI-driven you confirm yourself; the notice text and an AI register come with it as evidence, and the automated test of whether the notice is actually on is the announced next step. For 29 euros per month or 290 per year (excl. VAT), on its own or as an add-on to your Seviranta plan.

Being small is no free pass under the AI Act, but it is not a big project either. Scan your site free and see in under a minute which widget you run and where you stand.

Sources: Article 50, EU AI Act · AI Act implementation timeline