The Digital Poland Project Centre has launched a call for tenders to create a central portal for the Polish AI sandbox and a secure environment for testing artificial intelligence. The project budget amounts to 35 million zlotys. The Ministry of Digital Affairs is responsible for its implementation, in collaboration with the Ministry of Development and Technology, the Office for Personal Data Protection, NASK, Cyfronet AGH and PCSS.
The system is designed to operate on two fronts. Companies and public authorities will be able to check the compliance of solutions – particularly high-risk systems – with the AI Act. Public authorities will also be provided with a technological environment for testing without interfering with operational systems and without having to build their own computing infrastructure.
The project is launching at a crucial moment. From 2 August, further provisions of the AI Act come into force, including those concerning the transparency of AI systems, although following EU amendments, some obligations for high-risk systems have been postponed to 2027 and 2028. Poland’s Act on Artificial Intelligence Systems was published on 27 July and, in principle, comes into force on 11 August. It provides for the establishment of KRiBSI, whose tasks will include, amongst other things, the creation and management of regulatory sandboxes.
For businesses, the benefits may include more cost-effective regulatory compliance and access to experts. This is particularly important for start-ups and SMEs, for whom maintaining their own computing infrastructure, legal support and security testing can present a barrier. European AI Factories are designed to support industry and start-ups, and certain access options to their resources are free of charge for eligible SMEs.
However, the project has its critics, who argue that the adopted model concentrates public funds and implementation too heavily on state and academic institutions, limiting the involvement of private data centres, GPU suppliers and organisations from the Polish AI ecosystem. Critics have also argued that the use of AI Factories’ infrastructure could amount to double funding, as publicly funded resources will benefit from the additional demand generated by the sandbox.
The success of the project will therefore depend not on the portal itself, but on the pace of procedures, openness to the private ecosystem and the number of solutions that actually reach the market following testing.
