This analysis provides an overview of the enactment of the final European regulation about harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (AI Act). The AI Act establishes the first legally binding horizontal regulation on AI. The paper follows an interdisciplinary approach in combining legal scrutiny with political analysis in order to clearly define and explain the rationale, overall structure, and the shortcomings of the provisions. We understand the crafting of the AI Act as a reaction to the growing centralisation and power of non-European platforms in developing and providing AI systems, and the EU’s geopolitical and normative aspirations to shape the adoption of this technology. Overall, this analysis seeks to familiarise researchers from other disciplines (from tech to policy) with the complex regulatory structure and logic of the AI Act. The analysis is structured into three major parts: first, analysing the regulatory necessity in introducing a coer‐ cive regulatory framework; second, presenting the Act’s regulatory concept with its fundamental decisions, core provisions, and risk typology; and, lastly, critically analysing the shortcomings, tensions, and watered-down assessments of the Act.
