# EU AI Act transparency duties under Article 50 apply from 2 August 2026

The EU AI Act's Article 50 transparency obligations for chatbots, AI-generated content, deep fakes and emotion recognition applied from 2 August 2026, with fines of up to EUR 15 million or 3 percent of worldwide turnover. Generative systems already on the market have until 2 December 2026 for machine-readable marking.

URL: https://airiskalmanac.com/news/news-2026-08-02-eu-ai-act-article-50-transparency/
Author: AI Risk Almanac | Publisher: AI Risk Almanac
Updated: 2026-11-03

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**The transparency obligations in Article 50 of the EU AI Act applied from 2 August 2026, the date the Act became generally applicable.** They require providers to make chatbots identify themselves and to mark AI-generated content as machine-detectable, and require deployers to disclose deep fakes, certain AI-generated text and the use of emotion recognition. The Digital Omnibus on AI gave one group a short extension: generative systems already on the market before 2 August 2026 have until 2 December 2026 to meet the marking duty.

## What happened

Article 50 sets four main duties:

- **Interaction with people (50(1)).** Providers must design AI systems that interact directly with people so that those people are told they are dealing with an AI system, unless that is obvious.
- **Synthetic content (50(2)).** Providers of systems, including general-purpose AI systems, that generate synthetic audio, image, video or text must ensure outputs are marked in a machine-readable format and detectable as artificially generated or manipulated.
- **Emotion recognition and biometric categorization (50(3)).** Deployers must inform the people exposed to these systems.
- **Deep fakes and public-interest text (50(4)).** Deployers must disclose that deep fake content, and text published to inform the public on matters of public interest, was artificially generated or manipulated. The text duty does not apply where the content has had human review or editorial control and someone holds editorial responsibility.

The Commission adopted guidelines on the scope of these obligations on 20 July 2026. A voluntary Code of Practice on marking and labeling AI-generated content, published by the Commission on 10 June, sets out practical steps to help providers and deployers meet these obligations. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, in force since 27 July, added the 2 December 2026 transitional date for systems already on the market. Under Article 99(4), breaches of Article 50 can draw fines of up to EUR 15 million or 3 percent of total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher; for SMEs and small mid-caps, whichever is lower.

## Why it matters

Article 50 applies regardless of a system's risk tier, so it reaches far more organizations than the high-risk regime, whose main obligations were moved to December 2027 and August 2028. Providers of chatbots and generative tools, and deployers that publish deep fakes or AI-generated public-interest text in the EU, now have defined legal duties and a stated penalty ceiling. Article 50 does not require insurance, but it adds to the regulatory exposure that assurance programs and underwriters assess. See [What Is AI Assurance?](/learn/what-is-ai-assurance/) and [When Does AI Insurance Become Required?](/analysis/when-does-ai-insurance-become-required/).

## What is not yet clear

How national authorities will enforce Article 50, and how they will treat signatories of the Code of Practice, will become clear only through practice. The [timeline](/landscape/the-timeline/) tracks the related dates.

## Primary sources

- Regulatory framework for AI (application timeline): https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai
- Article 50: Transparency obligations for providers and deployers of certain AI systems: https://ai-act-service-desk.ec.europa.eu/en/ai-act/article-50
- Guidelines on transparency obligations for providers and deployers of AI systems: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/guidelines-transparency-obligations-providers-and-deployers-ai-systems
- Commission publishes Code of Practice on marking and labelling AI-generated content: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-publishes-code-practice-marking-and-labelling-ai-generated-content
- Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2026/1744/oj
- Article 99: Penalties: https://ai-act-service-desk.ec.europa.eu/en/ai-act/article-99