Glossary Updates12 new terms added to the glossaries · October 2, 2026, 22:44 CEST
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Glossary · EU AI Act: general-purpose AI and transparency

Transparency obligations (AI Act)

Also known as: AI disclosure, deepfake labeling, watermarking, Article 50

The transparency obligations of the EU AI Act require that people are informed when they interact with an AI system, that synthetic audio, image, video and text content is marked in a machine-readable way as artificially generated, and that deepfakes and certain AI-generated texts are disclosed as such. They apply from August 2, 2026.

  • AI regulation
  • EU
  • Technical documentation

In one sentence

AI Act transparency obligations (Art. 50): tell people they interact with AI, mark synthetic content and disclose deepfakes, from August 2026.

Example

A support chatbot opens with “You are chatting with an AI assistant”, and the images it generates carry machine-readable provenance metadata.

How it applies

  • Interaction: Providers must design AI systems that interact with people so that users are informed they are dealing with AI, unless this is obvious.
  • Marking: Providers of systems generating synthetic audio, images, video or text must mark the output in a machine-readable format and make it detectable as artificially generated. For systems already on the market before August 2, 2026, this duty applies from December 2, 2026.
  • Disclosure by deployers: Deployers of emotion recognition and biometric categorization systems must inform the people exposed; deployers of deepfakes must disclose that content is artificial; and AI-generated text published to inform the public on matters of public interest must be disclosed, unless it has undergone human review and someone holds editorial responsibility.
  • Technical documentation: Documentation generated with AI and published under editorial responsibility is not covered by the disclosure duty for public-interest text — but many companies label AI-assisted content anyway. Chatbots that answer from documentation must say that they are AI.

Compared with the USA, Canada and China

China's labeling measures are stricter and already in force: visible labels and metadata for AI-generated content since September 1, 2025, with duties for platforms as well. The USA has no general federal duty; individual states require disclosure for chatbots, political deepfakes or specific sectors. Canada relies on its voluntary code.