EU AI Act transparency duties take effect

The EU AI Act’s transparency obligations under Article 50 are now in force, with the European Commission publishing non-binding guidelines on 20 July 2026 to help providers, deployers and authorities apply the rules. Providers of legacy AI systems that generate synthetic audio, image, video or text content and were placed on the market before 2 August 2026 have until 2 December 2026 to meet the marking and detection duties under Article 50(2). Other Article 50 requirements took effect on 2 August 2026, and non-compliance may trigger fines of up to EUR 15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.

The rules require providers to tell individuals when they are directly interacting with an AI system, unless that is obvious to a reasonably well-informed person. Synthetic media systems must apply effective machine-readable markings, while deployers of emotion recognition or biometric categorisation tools must notify affected individuals before or at first exposure. Deep fakes and AI-generated or modified public-interest text must also be clearly labelled, with an exception for text subject to genuine human editorial review and responsibility.