High risk arrives by two routes
A system is high risk either because it is a safety component of a product already covered by EU harmonised legislation listed in Annex I, or because its use is listed in Annex III — biometrics, critical infrastructure, education, employment, essential services, law enforcement, migration, justice.
Why it is like this
Two existing worlds had to be joined: product safety law, which already had conformity assessment, and the new list of consequential social uses that no product law covered.
Not to be confused with
One list. The Annex I route reuses the existing product conformity regime; the Annex III route has its own. And Annex III has a filter: a system in a listed area is not high risk if it only performs a narrow procedural task or preparatory work — but that exemption never applies to profiling of natural persons.
In practice
A CV ranker is high risk by Annex III. A spell-checker inside the same recruitment tool is narrow and procedural, so it is not.
Source: Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act) — Article 6(1) to 6(3), Annex I and Annex III. Read on .
Predict Check yourself
A recruitment tool in an Annex III area only de-duplicates applications — a narrow procedural task — but it does so by profiling candidates. High risk?
Show the answer
Yes — the narrow-task exemption is expressly unavailable where the system profiles natural persons.
Article 6(3) closes with that carve-out. Profiling is the thing the exemption was never meant to let through.