AI Act Article 50 — Transparency Obligations
English · 中文
Article 50 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, applicable from 2 August 2026. The EU's rule that AI content must be marked and that people must be told when they are dealing with AI.
In one line
The AI Act's disclosure clause: in defined situations, providers and deployers must make sure users know they are interacting with an AI system, or that content is AI-generated.
Who and what it governs
- Duty holders: providers and deployers.
- Four situations are covered:
- Direct interaction with an AI system (e.g. chatbots) — users must be informed;
- Synthetic content — AI-generated audio, image, video and text must carry machine-readable marking;
- Deep fakes — content that is artificially generated or manipulated must be disclosed as such;
- Emotion recognition and biometric categorisation — affected people must be informed.
Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2024-06-13 | regulation published (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) |
| 2026-07-20 | Commission publishes interpretive guidelines on Article 50 |
| 2026-08-02 | Article 50 transparency obligations start to apply |
| 2026-12-02 | deadline for machine-readable marking of generative systems already on the market before 2026-08-02 (a grace period introduced when the AI Act was amended by the Digital Omnibus on AI) |
Penalties
Breaches of the Article 50 obligations fall under Article 99(4) of the AI Act: up to EUR 15 million or 3% of total worldwide annual turnover for the preceding financial year, whichever is higher.
The 2026 amendment
The AI Act was amended by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (the Digital Omnibus on AI), in force from 27 July 2026. Article 50 itself still applies from 2 August 2026; what the amendment changed is the grace period for machine-readable marking described in the timeline above. See ai-act.md.
Comparison with China
- China's counterpart is the Measures for Labelling AI-Generated Synthetic Content plus the mandatory national standard GB 45438-2025, using a dual track of explicit labelling + implicit labelling.
- Dimension-by-dimension comparison:
../compare/01-ai-labeling.md.
Unverified / TODO
- Add EUR-Lex links to Articles 50 and 99 — https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/oj
- Verify the exact wording and scope of the 2026-12-02 transition deadline — confirmed: a grace period introduced by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 for systems placed on the market before 2026-08-02
- Add the official link to the Commission guidelines and summarise the key points — https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/guidelines-ai-transparency-obligations
- Confirm the applicable penalty tier and percentage — Article 99(4): EUR 15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover
Source quotes
Providers shall ensure that AI systems intended to interact directly with natural persons are designed and developed in such a way that the natural persons concerned are informed that they are interacting with an AI system— Article 50(1) — the interaction-disclosure duty (snapshot:snapshots/eu/ai-act.txt)Providers of AI systems, including general-purpose AI systems, generating synthetic audio, image, video or text content, shall ensure that the outputs of the AI system are marked in a machine-readable format and detectable as artificially generated or manipulated.— Article 50(2) — machine-readable marking of synthetic content (snapshot:snapshots/eu/ai-act.txt)Deployers of an AI system that generates or manipulates image, audio or video content constituting a deep fake, shall disclose that the content has been artificially generated or manipulated.— Article 50(4) — deep fake disclosure; the official text spells it as two words, and so does the card after this pass (snapshot:snapshots/eu/ai-act.txt)shall be subject to administrative fines of up to EUR 15 000 000 or, if the offender is an undertaking, up to 3 % of its total worldwide annual turnover for the preceding financial year, whichever is higher— Article 99(4) — the tier the Penalties section applies to Article 50 breaches (snapshot:snapshots/eu/ai-act.txt)Providers of AI systems, including general-purpose AI systems, generating synthetic audio, image, video or text content, that have been placed on the market before 2 August 2026 shall take the necessary steps in order to comply with Article 50(2) by 2 December 2026— Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 — the 2026-12-02 row of the timeline (snapshot:snapshots/eu/ai-act-amendment.txt)