(83) In light of the nature and complexity of the value chain for AI systems and in line with the New Legislative Framework, it is essential to ensure legal certainty and facilitate the compliance with this Regulation. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the role and the specific obligations of relevant operators along that value chain, such as importers and distributors who may contribute to the development of AI systems. In certain situations those operators could act in more than one role at the same time and should therefore fulfil cumulatively all relevant obligations associated with those roles. For example, an operatoroperatormeans a provider, product manufacturer, deployer, authorised representative, importer or distributorArticle 3(8) could act as a distributordistributormeans a natural or legal person in the supply chain, other than the providerprovidermeans a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body that develops an AI system or a general-purpose AI model or that has an AI system or a general-purpose AI model developed and places it on the market or puts the AI system into service under its own name or trademark, whether for payment or free of chargeArticle 3(3) or the importerimportermeans a natural or legal person located or established in the Union that places on the market an AI system that bears the name or trademark of a natural or legal person established in a third countryArticle 3(6), that makes an AI systemAI systemmeans a machine-based system that is designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment, and that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environmentsArticle 3(1) available on the Union marketArticle 3(7) and an importerimportermeans a natural or legal person located or established in the Union that places on the market an AI system that bears the name or trademark of a natural or legal person established in a third countryArticle 3(6) at the same time.