Four days to 2 February. Here is the one page, written out
The first EU AI Act obligations apply on Sunday. If you have not done anything yet, this is genuinely an afternoon of work. Copy the structure.
On Sunday 2 February 2025 the first binding provisions of the EU AI Act apply: the prohibited practices, and the AI literacy obligation. If your company has done nothing about it, here is the whole exercise.
First, the thirty-second scope check
Switzerland is not in the EU. The Act reaches you only if you place an AI system on the EU market, or if the output of a system you operate is used in the EU. A Swiss firm using a chatbot internally is generally outside.
If you are outside, write that down with today’s date and one sentence of reasoning, and you are finished with the Act. The page below is still worth having, because Swiss data protection law applies to you regardless.
The page itself
Heading. « Use of AI tools at [company] », with a date and a named owner.
1. Which tools we use. A list. Include the AI features inside software you already bought — mail summaries, meeting notes, the phone. Those count.
2. What may go in. Concrete, in your own words. For example: public information and our own draft text, yes; customer names, contract text, personnel files and unpublished prices, no, unless you are in the approved tool.
3. What must be checked. Any output that gets sent externally, used in a quotation, or entered into the accounts is read by a person first. Name the principle: the tool drafts, a person decides.
4. Who to ask. One name for « may I use X? ».
5. Acknowledgement. A line confirming that staff who use these tools have read this page. That line is your evidence.
Then check the one prohibition that catches SMEs
Emotion inference in the workplace is banned. Some HR analytics, call-centre sentiment scoring and productivity-monitoring products fall inside it and are sold as ordinary tooling. If you have bought anything in that family, read the ban text once this week.
That is all of it
No framework, no consultant, no software. One page, one owner, one date, one review in six months.
Companies that do this in an afternoon now will not think about it again until the summer. Companies that wait will do the same work later, under pressure, and with someone asking why it was not done in January.