The basic rule: whoever builds further, remains liable further
Articles 23 and 24 AI Act set out clearly separated roles: importers check, before placing a system on the market, whether the provider has fulfilled its obligations (CE marking, technical documentation, conformity assessment under Art. 43). Distributors check the same before making a system available on the market – both, in other words, act in reliance on someone else’s work. Art. 25 breaks that reliance at exactly three points: anyone – distributor, importer, deployer or other third party – who actively intervenes in a system becomes a provider in their own right and takes on the full set of obligations under Art. 16. This is no theoretical footnote; in practice it is the most common reason why companies misjudge their role under the AI Act.
The three triggers of Art. 25
Art. 25(1) sets out three scenarios in which a distributor or importer becomes a provider:
- Own branding (point (a)): you affix your name or trade mark to a high-risk AI system that has already been placed on the market – for instance when white-labelling a bought-in system for your own distribution.
- Substantial modification (point (b)): you make a substantial modification to a high-risk AI system that has already been placed on the market, such that it remains a high-risk system under Art. 6.
- Change of intended purpose (point (c)): you change the intended purpose of an AI system – including a general-purpose AI system – in a way that turns it into a high-risk AI system for the first time.
The typical scenario in practice: a company buys in an AI module, adapts it for a new field of application (say, from internal text classification to automated candidate screening) and fails to notice that this very adaptation changes its role. Under Art. 25(2), the original provider loses its provider status for that specific system – but must continue to cooperate closely with the new provider and grant the necessary technical access, unless it has expressly excluded further processing of that kind.
Special case: product manufacturers
Art. 25(3) governs a further transition of roles: where the high-risk AI system is a safety component of a product covered by the harmonisation legislation listed in Annex I, Section A, the product manufacturer is deemed to be the provider – both where the system is placed on the market together with the product under its brand name, and where it is put into service under its brand name at a later stage. For mechanical engineering, medical devices and other sectors regulated by product law, this obligation is easily overlooked, since it does not attach to the AI system itself but to the surrounding product legislation.
The contractual gap: access to documentation
Art. 25(4) requires providers of a high-risk AI system and any third party supplying components, tools or services for it to set out, in a written agreement, what information, capabilities, technical access and other assistance the provider needs in order to fully comply with its obligations. This duty falls away only for third parties supplying components under a free and open-source licence – general-purpose AI models are expressly excluded from that carve-out. This is precisely where the typical gap lies: procurement contracts for AI components tend to cover licensing and liability, but rarely the technical access that will be needed in the event of a conformity assessment. Anyone who later discovers that they have themselves become a provider under Art. 25, without a contractual right to the necessary documentation, is left with no room to manoeuvre.
Deadlines and next steps
The substantive obligations under Art. 16, which apply once a change of role occurs under Art. 25, are tied to the AI Act’s high-risk deadlines. For systems under Annex III, the Digital Omnibus on AI sets 2 December 2027 as the new deadline; for high-risk AI systems captured via Annex I product legislation, the deadline is 2 August 2028. Before then, you should establish whether your own adaptations, integrations or changes of purpose to bought-in AI systems effectively make you a provider – and whether your supply contracts even provide for the documentation access this would require.
Whether your case falls under Art. 25, and what obligations follow from it in concrete terms, cannot be answered in general terms without looking at the individual system. The free risk check at /einstufung gives you an initial indication of where your company stands in the AI value chain.