European UnionAI Act, Article 50 (transparency obligations for AI systems and synthetic content)
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 50
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What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.
In force 52 days, effective 2 August 2026.
An AI transparency rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 14 August 2026.
What it requires
- Tell users they are talking to an AI when your app deploys a chatbot or voice agent
- Mark AI-generated text, audio, image, and video output as AI-generated
- Use a machine-readable marking where feasible
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureNo
Private right of actionNo
Penalty structure
Article 99(4)(g): non-compliance with the Article 50 transparency obligations is fined up to EUR 15,000,000 or 3% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher. Article 99(6) requires the lower of the two amounts for an SME, including a start-up.
- Rule
- Lower of for SME
- As of
- 2 September 2026
- Currency
- EUR
- Fixed cap
- 15,000,000
- Turnover percentage cap
- 3
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
National market surveillance authorities, at least one designated by each Member State under Article 70.
Enforcement record
Article 50 is enforced by each Member State's own national market surveillance authority designated under Article 70(1), not by the Commission or the AI Office, so no single body publishes a register to read a Union-level count from. The AI Office's own site, including its 'Latest News' list (current to 2026-09-08), names no aggregation of the national authorities' Article 50 actions, and no Commission report of that kind exists yet. actions_per_year is left unrecorded rather than estimated from any one Member State's docket: enforcement is national and uncounted at Union level. Article 113 sets the general application date for Article 50, and with it the Article 99(4)(g) fine for non-compliance, at 2026-08-02, so the window in which any national authority could have enforced runs to under two months as of 2026-09-17.
- As of
- 17 September 2026
- Source link
- https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-office
What it reaches
How the hook was established
express
What makes it apply
Market targeting, Operator establishment, Place of effect
Obligation class
Content labelling, Disclosure
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Article 50 requires providers to mark AI-generated output and to tell people they are dealing with an AI system at the point of interaction or exposure. It states no duty to create, keep, or later produce a log or record of that marking or disclosure.
- Kind
- None
- As of
- 21 September 2026
Who checks it
Audit expectation
none
Also on the record
EEA status
- Status
- Pending
- Source link
- https://www.efta.int/eea-lex/32024r1689
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Providers of AI systems that interact directly with people must ensure users are informed they are dealing with an AI system unless obvious from context, and providers of generative AI must mark synthetic audio, image, video, or text output in a machine-readable, detectable format.
Deployers of emotion-recognition or biometric-categorization systems must inform exposed individuals, and deployers of deepfakes or AI-generated public-interest text must disclose the artificial origin unless the content underwent human review with editorial responsibility. The Article reaches providers and deployers outside the EU whose system's output is used in the EU.
A four-month transition, to 2 December 2026, applies only to the machine-readable marking sub-duty for generative systems already on the market before 2 August 2026, added by the Digital Omnibus on AI.
When LexLint raises it
generates_contentdeploys_chatbot
Read the law
official consolidated Official Journal text, EUR-Lex
Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.