Dr Abeba Birhane, Director of the AI Accountability Lab at Trinity College, has been elected to the European Commission’s AI Act Advisory Forum. The Forum brings together leading stakeholders from academia, civil society, and industry to provide technical expertise on the implementation of the AI Act.
Dr Abeba Birhane is one of 174 Advisory Forum members who have been selected from more than 700 applications. The members provide advice on a broad range of aspects of the AI Act, including standardisation and implementation challenges.
Dr Birhane is one of only three members from Ireland and the only member from an Irish university. Google Ireland and the Irish Council of Civil Liberties are also members.
The members serve two-year terms and are expected to actively engage in plenary meetings and thematic subgroups, and to provide opinions, recommendations and written contributions at the request of the AI Board or the Commission.
Commenting on her appointment, Dr Birhane said: “I am pleased to embark on the Forum’s important work in supporting the effective and timely implementation of EU legislation and policies,”
Dr Birhane is an internationally recognised expert in AI accountability. Her research focuses on the auditing of AI models and training datasets. She was named in Time Magazine’s TIME 100 Most Influential People in AI list in 2023 and has previously served on both the United Nations Secretary-General’s AI Advisory Body and Ireland’s AI Advisory Council.
After months of engagement with stakeholders, the final text of the EU AI Act is expected to be published in the Official Journal of the EU next month. The med tech industry has long advocated for a sectoral approach for medical devices, which would see AI requirements included in existing Medical Devices Regulations (MDR) and In Vitro Diagnostic Regulations (IVDR) to avoid overlapping obligations.
On 7 May 2026, the European Commission confirmed that medical technologies will remain subject to the AI Act’s high-risk requirements. The EC agreed, in principle to defer the compliance deadlines for obligations under the AI Act for high-risk AI systems embedded in products, including medical technologies, from 2 August 2026 to 2 August 2028. Other changes include narrowing the high-risk scope through revisions to the definition of ‘safety component’, broadening the obligation regarding AI literacy, and introducing a potential mechanism to limit the application of certain AI Act requirements where sectoral legislation provides equivalent safeguards.
The final text is expected to clarify that human oversight is a prerequisite for compliance with the rules for high-risk AI systems. Furthermore, the provider of an AI system must assess the intended use of the system prior to placing the product on the market or putting it into service. Actual use of the AI system is not required in order to be classified as high-risk.
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