1.5 Compliant Use of AI
Take Home message
-
There is no legal vacuum. Data protection law has applied all along.
- The timetable moved. The high-risk duties for education AI start on 2 December 2027, not August 2026. Check your school's handouts.
- Already binding since February 2025. Emotion recognition in schools is prohibited, and schools deploying AI must ensure staff competence. Labelling of AI-generated content starts in August 2026.
- The hardest layer is data protection. No personal data about pupils without a contract that excludes training on your inputs; consent usually does not carry; deleting names is not anonymizing.
- In copyright, the upload is the problem. The teaching exception does not cover feeding protected works into an AI.
- Detectors do not hold up as evidence. Reasoned inference from concrete signs does. Rules must be clear in advance, and labeling beats banning.
- Grades stay human — and rubber-stamping an AI's suggestion is not a human decision.
- Responsibility sits with procurement, not with you — and compliance enables. The schools with clear rules are the ones whose teachers report saving the most time.