EU AI Act 2026: What Lithuanian Businesses Must Know About Requirements and Penalties

TL;DR: The EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) in 2026 brings stringent requirements and enormous penalties (up to €35 million or 7% of turnover) for non-compliance. If your customers are served by an AI voice assistant, it must inform the customer that they are speaking with AI, and all data must remain within the territory of the European Union. POSKAI is one of the few platforms that, from day one, complies with all EU AI Act and GDPR requirements, protects your customer data in an isolated infrastructure, and guarantees peace of mind for your business at a price starting from just €500/month.

What is the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) and why is it important in 2026?

The European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act is the world's first comprehensive legal framework regulating the development, distribution, and use of artificial intelligence systems. While the Act was officially adopted in 2024, the main, most stringent requirements for most business users will fully come into force in 2026. For Lithuanian companies already using or planning to implement AI technologies, this marks a new era of responsibility.

In Lithuania, an increasing number of companies are automating sales, customer service, and reservations using artificial intelligence. However, technological enthusiasm often overshadows security requirements. Does your chosen AI solution have servers in Europe? Are customers informed that they are communicating with AI? Are you sure that a third-party provider will not use your sensitive business data to train their models? The EU AI Act requires clear, documented answers to all these questions.

If a company uses AI solutions (for example, virtual voice assistants for customer service), all legal responsibility for transparency and security ultimately lies with the company itself, not with some obscure foreign startup from whom you purchased the service. This is especially relevant when using popular, but often insecure, "cheap" American solutions.

What penalties threaten businesses for EU AI Act violations?

Similar to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU AI Act introduces massive penalties designed to deter negligence. The European Union has clearly demonstrated that technological convenience must never compromise personal privacy or human rights.

Penalties are categorized by the severity of the violation and the level of risk:

• For using prohibited AI practices: The most severe penalties. Companies face fines of up to €35 million or 7% of their total annual global turnover (whichever is higher). Prohibited practices include, for example, subliminal manipulation, social scoring, or biometric identification in public spaces without a legal basis.
• For violations of data management and high-risk system requirements: Fines of up to €15 million or 3% of total annual turnover. This primarily affects companies that use AI solutions in areas such as education, employment, critical infrastructure management, but fail to implement adequate risk mitigation measures.
• For providing false information to authorities: Fines of up to €7.5 million or 1.5% of turnover. If false information about the AI system's operation is provided to authorities during an audit.
• For non-compliance with transparency requirements: If your virtual assistant calls a customer and does not inform them that the conversation is with artificial intelligence, you risk enormous financial penalties. Consumers in the EU have a fundamental right to know whether they are interacting with a human or a machine.

For Lithuanian companies, this is a serious warning: the acquisition of artificial intelligence systems must not be accidental. Every decision must be audited and legally secure.

How are AI systems categorized by risk levels?

The EU AI Act is based on a risk-based approach. Systems are divided into four main categories:

1. Unacceptable risk: Such systems are completely prohibited. This includes social scoring, cognitive manipulation, and certain biometric surveillance systems.
2. High risk: Systems that directly affect people's lives, safety, or fundamental rights. For example, AI systems used for CV screening in recruitment, medical assessment, creditworthiness checks in banks. Such systems are subject to extremely strict security, transparency, and human oversight requirements.
3. Limited risk: This category includes most customer service chatbots, AI call assistants, and generative AI tools. The main requirement for these systems is transparency. Users must be clearly informed that they are interacting with a machine, not a human. For example, the POSKAI AI voice assistant can clearly state its nature at the beginning of a call, thus ensuring full compliance.
4. Minimal risk: This category includes most AI applications, such as AI-controlled video games or spam filters. No mandatory requirements apply to these systems, but adherence to voluntary codes of conduct is encouraged.

Read more about how AI automates customer service in the logistics sector, where speed of operations must go hand in hand with security standards.

Key requirements for companies using AI in customer service

If your company implements voice assistants for sales, customer consultations, appointment confirmations, or payment reminders, you fall into the "Limited Risk" or, in some cases, "High Risk" categories (if you handle sensitive medical, legal, or financial data).

Here are the key requirements you must be prepared for:

• Transparency principle: The customer answering the call must know from the first seconds, or at least clearly understand from the context, that they are not speaking with a living person. Even if the POSKAI voice engine generates incredibly natural, "human-like" Lithuanian speech, transparency must be ensured.
• Human Oversight: Systems cannot operate completely autonomously in a "black box." Mechanisms must be in place for a customer to be transferred to a live employee at any time if problems or complex situations arise. The POSKAI system allows real-time monitoring of calls and instantaneous transfer of conversations.
• Data quality and security: The EU AI Act requires that AI systems be trained with representative and high-quality data, avoiding discrimination.
• Resilience to cyberattacks: Your AI solution must be resistant to manipulation. A huge problem with poor-quality AI bots is so-called prompt injection — when a malicious user uses a specially formulated sentence to force an AI assistant to reveal sensitive company data or even grant an unauthorized discount.

"Artificial intelligence must serve people, be transparent, and secure. Businesses that think they can ignore the EU AI Act will soon face not only fines but also a loss of customer trust."

Why American AI platforms are becoming a huge risk for Lithuanian businesses?

Many companies, seeking ways to automate operations, discover foreign platforms such as "Bland AI," "Retell AI," "Synthflow," or "Vapi." At first glance, they appear modern, but delving into the requirements of the EU AI Act and GDPR, we encounter a catastrophic reality.

Why are these solutions legally dangerous for companies operating in the EU?

1. US servers and data leakage: Many of these platforms send your customer data, phone numbers, and call recordings to US servers. This is a direct GDPR violation. The US has the CLOUD Act, which allows US authorities to demand access to this data.
2. "Shared SaaS" risk (Shared infrastructure): This means that your company's data and competitors' data are processed in the same system. If even one customer of that platform experiences a security vulnerability, your customer base is at risk.
3. Shifting responsibility: The terms of service for these platforms usually include a clause: "The platform is not responsible for compliance with GDPR or local laws; all responsibility lies with the user." This means you are solely responsible if anything happens.
4. Lack of Lithuanian language and hallucinations: Foreign platforms simply use automatic translators, which leads to unnatural Lithuanian language and increases the risk of "hallucinations" (when AI invents nonsensical facts). This directly contradicts the EU AI Act's requirement to provide accurate and non-misleading information.

Read more about this in our comparison with existing market solutions.

GDPR and EU AI Act: Double responsibility for your company

Although the EU AI Act and GDPR are two different documents, they work in conjunction and do not cancel each other out. If your AI system violates personal privacy, you can be penalized under both regulations simultaneously.

GDPR requires that personal data be collected lawfully, processed securely, and used only for the purpose for which it was collected. When an AI assistant calls a person, it collects personal data (voice, phone number, conversation content, expressed wishes).

Our experience shows that businesses often ignore the fact that any voice recording is sensitive personal data. POSKAI infrastructure is designed to meet both requirements:

• 100% of data remains within the EU territory, ensuring GDPR compliance by default.
• Encryption: Every call is protected by End-to-End encryption.
• Automatic data anonymization: If required, POSKAI AI can automatically delete sensitive data (e.g., personal identification numbers or bank card numbers) from transcripts.

How POSKAI ensures full compliance and protects your business?

Unlike cheap alternatives or insecure foreign startups, POSKAI is not just an "AI call bot." It is a fully managed business communication platform, whose fundamental architecture is based on security and data isolation.

Here's why POSKAI is the safest choice for your business:

1. Per-client isolation (Complete separation)

This is probably the most important distinguishing feature of POSKAI in the entire market. We do not use shared SaaS (Software as a Service) infrastructure. Each of our clients receives their own completely separate, isolated infrastructure. Your data, your customer contacts, your call history, and your POSKAI AI assistant's configuration never intersect with any other client's data. Even if theoretically (although such a probability is maximized to be avoided) an incident occurs with one client, it would absolutely not affect your company in any way.

2. Protection against manipulation (Prompt Injection Protection)

Modern adversaries try to trick POSKAI AI systems by asking them to "ignore previous instructions" and provide sensitive information. POSKAI technology uses advanced protection layers to ensure that our POSKAI AI cannot be deceived and will never reveal your company's confidential information.

3. Complete openness and transparency (Custom Dashboard)

The EU AI Act requires transparency for system operators. With POSKAI, you always have full control. Each client receives a unique Custom Dashboard, where they can see ongoing calls, conversation transcripts with POSKAI AI summaries, and analytics data in real-time. Your data belongs to you, not to us.

4. All languages and immediate response time (< 500ms)

Smooth communication is also a quality standard. The POSKAI voice engine boasts an incredibly fast response time (less than 500 milliseconds), ensuring that the conversation flows naturally. Furthermore, POSKAI AI automatically recognizes the caller's language and can instantly switch to English, German, Polish, Latvian, French, or Spanish without any delay.

This is why the POSKAI solution, which costs from just €500/month, is chosen by Lithuanian companies aiming to automate processes securely and without any legal risk. You can read more about practical applications in the B2B sector in the article on AI cold calling.

Step-by-step: How to prepare your company for 2026?

If you want to avoid the attention of European regulators and penalties, you need to act now.

1. Conduct an audit of your existing technologies. Review all your chatbots, voice bots, POSKAI AI writing tools. Do you know where their servers are located?
2. Demand guarantees of EU data residency. Do not trust abstract statements. Request written confirmation that your customer data will never leave the EU borders.
3. Ensure transparency. Update your customer service procedures. If you use POSKAI AI voice, the assistant must introduce itself. (E.g., "Hello, this is company X's artificial intelligence assistant...").
4. Look for specialized, isolated solutions. Abandon mass-market, cheap American tools and invest in platforms that guarantee "per-client" isolation, such as POSKAI.
5. Abandon "Custom" solutions without support. Never hire a freelance programmer to create an POSKAI AI bot for a one-time project. You will need continuous security updates, which can only be provided by a professional platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main penalties under the EU AI Act?

Penalties can range from €7.5 million (or 1.5% of turnover) for formal violations to €35 million (or 7% of turnover) for using prohibited AI system practices.

Does the EU AI Act apply to my company if I only use a customer service bot?

Yes. Customer service bots and AI voice assistants are typically classified as limited-risk systems. The main requirement is to ensure transparency, i.e., to inform the customer that they are communicating with artificial intelligence, and to process personal data in accordance with GDPR requirements within the EU territory.

Why do foreign platforms like Bland AI or Retell not comply with the requirements?

These platforms send sensitive data through US-based servers, do not ensure "per-client" data isolation, and transfer responsibility for privacy policy and GDPR compliance to the user themselves. US law allows government agencies to access this data, which severely violates European standards.

How much does a secure AI calling solution with POSKAI cost?

The POSKAI platform offers a fully managed, secure, isolated infrastructure, tailored for the Lithuanian market, at a price starting from just €500/month. No hidden fees or per-minute charges — everything is included.

How does POSKAI ensure personal data security?

POSKAI uses unique "per-client isolation" technology. Each client's data, infrastructure, and POSKAI AI engine are separate. All servers are 100% in the European Union, and every conversation is encrypted (End-to-End encryption).