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.