Guides & Educational Resources
Three roles around an AI system, in plain words
6 min read · Updated 2026-11-08
The builder and the organization that switches it on
One organization often builds or supplies the system. Another decides to use it on its customers, staff, or students. A clinic that turns on a writing tool is not the same actor as the company that trained the model. A shop that installs a chatbot is not the same actor as the vendor that hosts it.
The EU AI Act uses particular words for these roles, including provider and deployer, and attaches different duties to each. Other countries use other words, or regulate the use without copying that split. The plain distinction still helps: who built it, and who chose to put it into this workflow.
The person on the receiving end
There is a third role the contract sometimes forgets. Someone is scored, filtered, answered, or denied. That person may have rights under privacy law, consumer law, or employment law that do not depend on what the vendor calls the feature. Those rights also differ by country.
When you map a tool, write this third role in the same sentence as the other two. "The vendor hosts it, our support team switches it on, and the customer receives the answer."
Why the labels change the questions
If you build the system, questions about training, testing, and instructions are close to you. If you only use it, your questions are about how you configure it, what you tell people, and how a human can step in. If you do both, you carry both sets of questions. Buying a tool does not move every duty to the vendor, and supplying a tool does not make you responsible for every use a customer invents.
This is general education, not legal advice. Whether a specific role applies to you is a legal question for your situation, not a label you can copy from this page.
This article is general education, not legal advice. ComplianceEU Alliance is an independent private initiative, not a regulator or certification body.