Why the version question matters
Most businesses that have done any AI Act work hold a document produced in 2025 or early 2026: a gap analysis, a board paper, a supplier questionnaire, a policy. A good number of those documents now cite provisions that have been deleted, deadlines that have moved and classifications that have changed. That is not a criticism of whoever wrote them. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Digital Omnibus on AI, entered into force on 27 July 2026 and rewrote a substantial part of the Regulation. A compliance document that has not been checked against the amended text is now a liability rather than an asset.
The clearest illustration is the bias detection derogation. Until 27 July 2026 it lived in Article 10(5), and a whole literature of guidance notes, academic papers and vendor explainers is named after that paragraph. Article 10(5) no longer exists; its substance moved into a new Article 4a in Chapter I, in broader form. Anyone citing Article 10(5) is citing repealed text, and anyone searching the topic will find the old material long before the new provision.
What actually changed on 27 July 2026
The Digital Omnibus on AI is a genuine amending regulation, not guidance. Its full title records that it amends Regulations (EU) 2024/1689, (EU) 2018/1139 and (EU) 2023/1230 as regards the simplification of the implementation of harmonised rules on artificial intelligence. It was adopted on 8 July 2026 and published in the Official Journal on 24 July 2026.
The headline change is the timetable. The obligations in Chapter III, Sections 1, 2 and 3 now apply from 2 December 2027 for systems classified as high-risk under Article 6(2) and Annex III, and from 2 August 2028 for those classified under Article 6(1) and Annex I. Just as important is what did not move. The transparency obligations in Article 50 were not deferred and have applied since 2 August 2026. The new prohibitions added to Article 5 apply from 2 December 2026, and the regulatory sandbox provisions from 2 August 2027. Substantively, Article 4 on AI literacy was replaced, Article 6 gained new paragraphs narrowing when AI counts as a safety component, Article 10 was amended and its paragraph 5 deleted, Article 11 extended simplified technical documentation to small mid-cap enterprises, and machinery moved out of Annex I Section A. Several central provisions, including Articles 14 and 26, were not touched at all.
How to check whether a citation still holds
The method below takes a few minutes and settles almost every question about whether a provision still says what a memo claims.
Decide which date you need the law as at
EUR-Lex publishes consolidated versions of amended acts, each fixed to a date. The address follows a simple grammar. A document number beginning with 3 is the act as adopted, so the original AI Act is CELEX 32024R1689 and the Omnibus is CELEX 32026R1744. A number beginning with 0 followed by a date is the consolidated version as it stood on that date. For the AI Act as it stands today, that is CELEX 02024R1689-20260727. If the served page does not carry the date you expected in its header, you are reading a different version of the law.
Read the markers, not just the words
A consolidated text is annotated. Blocks carried over unchanged from the original act are marked with a B; blocks touched by an amending act are marked with an M and a number identifying it. The AI Act currently has only one amending act, so every M1 marker points to Regulation (EU) 2026/1744. Hovering a marker in EUR-Lex reveals whether the block that follows was inserted, replaced or deleted. Deleted text is not silently removed: it renders as a run of dashes. Article 10 in the consolidated AI Act reads paragraph 4, then a marker followed by dashes where paragraph 5 used to be, then paragraph 6. That is the fastest answer to whether Article 10(5) still exists.
Prove a negative against the amending act, never against silence
The hardest thing to establish is that a provision was not amended, and this is where most errors occur. The answer is Article 1 of Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, which lists every change as a numbered point in ascending order of article number. If your provision does not appear in that list, it was not amended. That is how it can be stated with confidence that Articles 14 and 26 stand unchanged. What does not establish it is the absence of a warning notice on a website, and that distinction is worth taking seriously for the reason set out below.
Remember that the consolidated text has no legal effect
EUR-Lex says so at the top of every consolidated document: the text “is meant purely as a documentation tool and has no legal effect”, and the authentic versions are those published in the Official Journal. For day-to-day work the consolidated version is the right tool, because it shows the law in one place. For anything that has to survive scrutiny by a regulator, a counterparty or a court, the citation is the Official Journal text of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 together with the Official Journal text of Regulation (EU) 2026/1744.
Where the traps are
The most surprising trap sits on an official platform. The European Commission operates an AI Act Service Desk with a page for each article, and those pages state that the text used is the official version of 13 June 2024. Several of them now carry a notice explaining that the provision has been amended by the Digital Omnibus and that the displayed text has not yet been updated. The Article 10 page carries no such notice, and still serves paragraph 5 as live text. A reader checking the bias detection derogation on the Commission’s own platform is given repealed law with no warning at all. There is no page for Article 4a, and the frequently asked questions the notices point to are themselves written in the language of a proposal.
The fair way to put this is that the Commission’s prose about the AI Act is current while its reproduction of the AI Act is not. Its narrative guidance on navigating the Act was updated in August 2026 and states the amended dates correctly: two pages on two subdomains, one right and one wrong. Independent explorer sites are worse: the best known of them, run by a non-profit organisation, serves the June 2024 text throughout with no amendment notices anywhere and an implementation timeline that has not been updated since 2024, and it ranks at the top of search results for almost every “AI Act Article” query. A freshness stamp is not a freshness guarantee either. Pages carrying an “updated July 2026” badge can be found still listing 2 August 2026 as the date full high-risk compliance begins.
Practical example
A Gothenburg technology company commissioned an AI Act gap analysis in late 2025 for a system it sells to public sector customers. The report was competent when written. Reviewed today it contains three problems, none visible without checking against the amended text.
The first is a timetable built around 2 August 2026, which drove a compressed and expensive remediation plan for work that is not now required until 2 December 2027. The second is a section on using sensitive data to test for bias, built on Article 10(5), which no longer exists; the analysis therefore misses that Article 4a extends a comparable permission beyond high-risk providers and states expressly that it creates no obligation to conduct bias detection. The third is a recommendation to rely on simplified technical documentation as a small enterprise. That relief was widened by the Omnibus to cover small mid-cap enterprises, but the amended provision requires a business taking it to use a form the Commission has not yet published, so the relief is not currently exercisable. Two of the three errors would have made the company do too much, and one would have made it rely on something unavailable. Both kinds are expensive.
Common mistakes companies make
The first is assuming that a delay means nothing needs doing. Article 50 transparency has applied since August 2026, the AI literacy duty in Article 4 applies now, and further prohibitions arrive in December 2026. The second is treating an official-looking website as equivalent to the legal text, when the only authoritative sources are the Official Journal and, as a working tool, the EUR-Lex consolidated version. The third is proving a negative from silence, concluding that a provision is unamended because no site flagged it, rather than checking the amending regulation. The fourth is updating dates but not text, which produces a document that looks current and still cites deleted paragraphs. The fifth is trusting a “last updated” stamp, which reflects when a page was touched and not whether its content was checked. The sixth is relying on an AI assistant’s summary without verifying the citation, since automated retrieval of these long documents truncates and can produce confident, wrong answers about later articles and annexes.
Recommended actions
Take an hour and re-open the AI Act documents your business already relies on. For each one, check three things: whether the dates match the amended timetable, whether every article and paragraph cited still exists in the consolidated text, and whether any conclusion depended on a provision the Omnibus changed. Pay particular attention to anything touching Articles 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 17 and Annex I, and to any reference to Article 10(5). Fix the document rather than reissuing it, and record the version and date you checked against, so the next reader knows what has been verified.
Then set a simple internal rule for future work. Every legal citation in an AI compliance document names the article, the regulation and the version consulted, and nothing is relied on without a check against EUR-Lex. In Sweden, keep an eye on the domestic layer as well. Post- och telestyrelsen updated its own guidance within days of the Omnibus entering into force and states plainly that the Regulation applies as Swedish law but presupposes complementary national provisions. Those provisions have not yet been adopted, so the Swedish enforcement picture is still incomplete, and any assessment that assumes a settled national regime is ahead of the facts.
Frequently asked questions
Do we have to redo our entire AI Act assessment?
Usually not. The structure of the Regulation is unchanged, so classification work, system inventories and provider or deployer analysis normally survive. What needs rechecking is anything date-dependent, anything relying on a provision the Omnibus amended, and anything about products moved between the Annex I sections. In practice most assessments need a targeted review of a handful of sections rather than a rewrite, but the review has to be deliberate, because the errors are invisible on the page.
Which citation should go into a contract or a board paper?
Cite Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 as amended by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, and name the article and paragraph. In a contract, avoid drafting that pins an obligation to a specific paragraph number where a reference to the requirement itself would do, because renumbering has already happened once and can happen again. Where a version matters, say which consolidated version you relied on and its date, so a later reader can reproduce your reasoning.
Does the delay to 2027 mean we can pause our AI compliance work?
No, for three reasons. Obligations already in force are unaffected, including the Article 50 transparency rules and the AI literacy duty. Further prohibitions take effect in December 2026. And the work that has been deferred is the work with the longest lead time, because risk management, data governance, documentation and logging all have to be designed into a system rather than added afterwards. The realistic reading of the new dates is more time to do the work properly, not permission to stop.
Conclusion
The Digital Omnibus did not make the AI Act simpler to read. It made it a moving target, and it left a large body of guidance describing a version of the law that no longer applies. The defence is a habit rather than a subscription: know which consolidated version you are reading, read the change markers, prove negatives against the amending regulation, and remember that only the Official Journal text is authentic. Businesses that adopt that habit will spend less time arguing about what the law says and more time complying with it. Lawgent helps businesses review and update AI Act compliance documentation against the amended Regulation.
