A privacy officer at a housing association gets two questions about the same tool in one week. Marketing wants to use ChatGPT to make job adverts read better. HR wants to use it to pre-sort the fifty applications for a vacancy, which would save a day of reading. Both teams expect the same answer, since it is the same tool.
She gives two different answers, and that is not inconsistency. One AI tool can be low and high risk at the same time, because the risk attaches not to the tool but to the use, the data and the account. The AI Act takes exactly the same approach: it classifies applications by their purpose, not tools by their name.
Why doesn't the risk attach to the tool?
An assessment of an AI tool has two halves. The first is about the vendor and the product: what happens to input, whether it is used for training, where processing takes place and whether there is a data processing agreement (DPA). That half is the same for every department. The second half is about the organisation: what the team will use the tool for and which personal data that involves. That half differs from request to request, and it is the one most often skipped. How those dimensions relate is set out in how to assess the risk of an AI tool.
Do only the first half and you end up with one verdict per tool. Do both and you end up with one verdict per use.
What changes with the purpose?
This is where the AI Act comes in, and the phrase everything hinges on is "intended purpose". The regulation classifies an AI system as high-risk when its intended purpose is listed in Annex III. Point 4 of that annex covers employment: filtering applications, evaluating candidates, deciding on promotion or dismissal and monitoring performance. Drafting a job advert is not on the list.
For the housing association, that means marketing's request does not touch Annex III. HR's request does, with one caveat. A general-purpose chatbot is not intended by its provider as a selection system, so a recruiter who pastes individual CVs into it is not using a high-risk system within the meaning of the law. If the organisation builds the model into the recruitment process and lets it decide who gets an interview, it has created a high-risk system itself and moves from deployer to provider. What that entails is covered in the EU AI Act for employers.
That caveat is not a free pass. Either way, the recruiter is making a decision about people with a tool that was not assessed for that purpose, and the GDPR and the organisation's own policy apply.
What changes with the data?
The GDPR asks the question from the other side: not what the system is, but which personal data is processed and on what basis. A job advert contains none. Fifty applications contain names, addresses, dates of birth, work histories and sometimes a line about health or family. What that brings into play, from lawful basis to human involvement, is covered in using AI safely in HR.
Same tool, two processing operations. For the second, you want to know whether there is a DPA, whether input is retained and whether it is used for training. Which brings us to the account.
What changes with the account?
The recruiter uses ChatGPT through a free account that was already on her laptop. Marketing has a business licence through the department. That is no small detail: the free account runs under consumer terms, without a DPA and, with most vendors, with training on input switched on by default unless the user turns it off. The business account handles all three differently. Why the line between account types matters more than the line between brands is explained in free versus business AI accounts.
For classification under the AI Act the account makes no difference; the purpose decides. For the risk under the GDPR it is the difference between a processing operation you can account for and one you cannot. That is why free and business versions of the same tool appear as separate rows in a register.
What does that look like for one tool?
Put the three variables side by side and one tool splits into a few rows.
| Use | Data | Account | AI Act | GDPR | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drafting a job advert | No personal data | Business licence | Not high-risk | No processing of personal data | Allowed |
| Summarising cover letters | Candidates' personal data | Free account | Not high-risk, but a decision about people | Processing without a DPA | Not allowed through this account |
| Ranking candidates as a fixed step in selection | Personal data, possibly special categories | Business licence | Becomes high-risk once built into the process | High-risk processing, DPIA in scope | No decision yet, assess first |
The table answers the question in the title. The first row is low risk and the third is high, yet it is the same tool. A register with a single row for ChatGPT gets one of the three wrong.
How did things turn out at the housing association?
The privacy officer gives marketing the go-ahead, with the business licence as the condition. HR gets a different answer: summarising applications is not allowed through the free account, and ranking candidates will first be assessed as a separate application, including who has oversight and what the vendor has documented about how it works. Until then, the status stays "No decision yet".
Meanwhile, an inventory shows that alongside Copilot, which was already allowed, Perplexity, ChatGPT and three specialist tools are in use, two of which are not yet in the register. That is not an incident. It shows that a one-off inventory quickly goes out of date, and that a conversation about one tool usually starts with which tools are in use at all.
BeeSensible links a catalogue of AI tools to the use observed in the organisation: only the domain, at most once a day per device, with no user ID. Free and business versions of the same tool appear in it as separate rows, each with its own risk score and an indicative EU AI Act category. That score is advice about the tool; a catalogue cannot know the use and the data, which is why the organisation sets the status itself, with a condition under "Limited use" that defines the permitted use. How that works is explained on the AI tools page.
