GDPR-compliant AI: running large language models in the EU

“We’d love to use AI, but data protection …” — we hear this a lot. The good news: modern AI can absolutely be run in a GDPR-compliant way. It comes down to where the model runs.

Three paths, one principle

1. Managed EU cloud. Models like Claude or GPT run in EU regions of AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. Data never leaves Europe, no training on your content.
2. Your own cloud instance. More control over network, access and logging — at the same scalability.
3. Fully local. Open models like Gemma, Llama or Mistral on your own hardware. Data never leaves the building.

What counts

Three things are decisive: data residency (where is it processed?), no training on your data, and a data processing agreement with the provider. Once those are settled, nothing stands in the way of production use.

Data protection is not a reason to skip AI — it’s a question of architecture.