A False Confidence in the EU AI Act: Epistemic Gaps and Bureaucratic Traps

On July 10, 2025, the European Commission released the final draft of the General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) Code of Practice, a “code designed to help industry comply with the AI Act's rules.” The Code has been under development since October 2024, when the iterative drafting process began after a kick-off plenary in September 2024. The Commission had planned to release the final draft by May 2, 2025, and the subsequent delay has sparked widespread speculation – ranging from concerns about industry lobbying to deeper, more ideological tensions between proponents of innovation and regulation. However, beyond these narratives, a more fundamental issue emerges: an epistemic and conceptual disconnect at the core of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act), particularly in its approach to “general-purpose AI” (GPAI). The current version, which includes three chapters covering “Transparency,” “Copyright,” and “Safety and Security,” does not address these core problems.