EU AI Act Transparency Obligations: What Applies From 2 August 2026

AI systems used for client communication, text and image generation and customer service are becoming increasingly common. As generative and interactive AI systems become part of everyday business tools, it is getting harder for people to distinquish AI-generated content.

People should know when they are interacting with AI or exposed to AI-generated content. That is why the EU AI Act includes transparency requirements to protect the public from fraud, manipulation, impersonation and consumer deception.

New transparency obligations apply from 2 August 2026. For many organizations operating in or serving the EU, this is one of the more immediately actionable parts of the AI Act, and one that's easy to underestimate.

What this means for providers

Article 50 of the AI Act sets out transparency obligations for providers and deployers of certain AI systems, including generative and interactive AI systems and deepfakes.

If your organization builds or supplies an AI system that falls in scope, you must:

• Design the system so people are explicitly informed when they are interacting with an AI system directly (for example, a customer-facing chatbot).

• Add machine-readable marks to AI-generated or AI-manipulated content, so that it can be detected as such.

An additional grace period applies for providers of AI systems placed on the market before 2 August 2026. The machine-readable marking obligations will apply to such 'legacy AI systems' from 2 December 2026.

There are a few, narrow exceptions to the transparency obligations if the AI interaction is obvious for a reasonably well-informed person or the AI system is authorized by law to detect, prevent, investigate or prosecute criminal offenses.

What this means for deployers

If your organization uses AI systems built by someone else, your obligations are on the receiving end of that interaction. You must inform individuals when they are exposed to:

• Emotion recognition or biometric categorization tools

• Deepfakes

• AI-generated text published on matters of public interest, where there has been no meaningful human review or editorial control.

There is no retroactive obligation to mark AI-generated content - however a few, narrow limitations to the transparency obligations exist for purposes of detecting crimes, satirical deepfakes and human-reviewed content.

⚠️ Please note that emotion recognition at workplace or in education is a prohibited practice under the EU AI Act. In such use cases, disclosure of emotion recognition will not overrule the prohibition.

Practical recommendations to avoid enforcement

Compliance will be enforced by national market surveillance authorities and the EU AI Office. The fines for non-compliance can reach 15 million euros or 3 % of global annual turnover, whichever is higher. The EU AI Act has broad, extraterritorial scope and even non-EU organizations could be in scope, if the output of their AI system is used in EU.

Here are a few practical recommendations to get started with Article 50 obligations.

Inventory your AI touchpoints. Map how your organization uses AI chatbots, generative content creation tools and emotion recognition/biometric recognition systems. Determine if these systems fall under article 50 obligations.

Design the disclosure. Design how you will fulfill the informing obligations - is it a watermark, banner within the chatbot window or a clear on-screen notice at the point of exposure? Consider adherence with a EU Code of Practice or documenting your own equivalent measures.

Build evidence. Document how you have fulfilled the transparency obligations and what measures you have put in place. Logging AI transparency trainings and workshops for evidence is a great additional step.

Map your unique situation

Regulyn is a legal boutique consultancy focusing on AI Compliance, R&D and complex EU regulations. We combine deep expertise, sector understanding and clear communication to solve compliance challenges for our clients.

If you are working through which of your systems fall under Article 50, and in which role, we can map it against your unique situation. Contact us to discuss more and get clear recommendations for next steps.

References and additional reading:

EU AI Act: Article 50 Transparency obligations for providers and deployers of certain AI systems

Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-generated Content

Guidelines on Transparency Obligations

EU Icons for labelling AI-generated content