Tech Show Frankfurt 2025: Panel „Navigating the EU AI Act"
The EU AI Act had just entered force. The first prohibitions on unacceptable-risk AI were live. The next round of obligations for general-purpose AI was on the horizon. And every enterprise legal, tech, and compliance team was asking the same operational question: how do we actually navigate this?
On the Keynote & Strategy stage of Tech Show Frankfurt 2025, I joined the panel „Navigating the EU AI Act — Implications and Opportunities." The lineup was deliberately cross-sector, and that's what made the conversation useful:
Chairperson: Jean Amedee Boni, Founder of smainos (smart ai innovation solutions) — bringing the innovation-consulting lens.
Dominick Romano, Contributor to AI For Radiology and the UN AI for Health Global Initiative — bringing the healthcare and international policy lens.
Michael Schorpp, Head of Digital Innovation & AI, Global Regulatory Affairs at Boehringer Ingelheim — bringing the pharma regulatory-affairs lens.
And me, then Program Manager Responsible AI at Carl Zeiss AG — bringing the industrial technology and enterprise-governance lens.
The question we sat with for 40 minutes: what does it actually mean, operationally, to bring the EU AI Act into a corporate reality? Reading the regulation is the easy part. The hard part is the operating model — the risk classifications, the cross-functional accountability, the works council coordination, the compliance without slowing innovation.
The room was full — a good sign that in June 2025, this was the conversation people wanted to have. Not another explainer on what the regulation says, but a working session on how it lands in an organization.
That was the register I brought to the panel and have kept ever since: AI governance that lives in a PDF is theater. It only counts when it lives in processes.
Thank you to Jean Amedee, Dominick, Michael, and to the Tech Show Frankfurt team for a room that treated the topic seriously. And for the conversations that continued long after the stage was empty.
If your team is still figuring out how to translate the EU AI Act into your organization - what's the process where it currently lives?
Further Reading:
Tech Show Frankfurt 2025 – Panel „Navigating the EU AI Act"