EU AI disclosure deadline nears for enterprises

The European Commission has issued guidance for providers and deployers preparing for the AI Act’s transparency obligations, most of which begin on August 2. Companies offering AI systems in the EU must tell people when they are interacting with AI and disclose exposure to deepfakes, emotion recognition, biometric categorization or AI-manipulated public-interest content without human review or editorial control.

The rules apply to organizations that place systems on the EU market or put them into service there, regardless of where the developer is based. Covered systems include chatbots, conversational agents, AI companions and coding agents, while tools such as recommender systems, spam filters, search, transcription, auto-completion and predictive maintenance are excluded. AI-generated text, images, video and audio must carry machine-readable marks, with labels such as “AI,” “Fully AI-generated” or “Partially AI-modified.”

Companies with systems already on the market before August 2 have until December 2 to comply, though advisers recommend preparing for the earlier deadline. Non-compliance can bring fines up to 3% of total worldwide annual revenue. Suggested preparation includes inventorying systems, assigning provider and deployer roles, placing disclosures at first interaction, defining human review and testing whether marks survive cropping, compression, translation, transcription and other edits.