- Date
- August 2, 2026
- Kind
- Regulatory change
- Significance
- High
The European Commission says that from August 2, 2026, providers and deployers of AI systems must comply with the transparency obligations in Article 50 of the AI Act for AI-generated or manipulated content.
What the Commission says
- AI systems placed on the market before August 2, 2026 “benefit from a transitional period for compliance until 2 December 2026”.
- The Code of Practice on transparency of AI-generated content was published on June 10, 2026. It is voluntary, and the Commission and the AI Board will assess whether it is adequate.
- The Commission’s FAQ said guidelines on Article 50 would be published ahead of August 2. Law-firm commentary reports that the final guidelines were adopted on July 20, 2026; we did not confirm that date on the Commission’s own page.
What the rules cover
Article 50 sets transparency duties for providers and deployers of AI systems, including marking and labelling of AI-generated content and deepfakes and telling people when they are interacting with an AI system. One law firm cautions that the scope is easy to overstate: the article does not require every user of a generative AI tool to label everything it produces. This entry is a summary, not legal advice.
Why it matters
Marketing teams that publish AI-generated images, video or text for audiences in the EU need to know which of their content falls under Article 50 and which does not, and what a record of human review looks like. The transitional period applies to systems already on the market, not to every team's workflow, so waiting until December is not a safe default.
What happened next
The obligations applied from August 2, 2026, with the transitional period for existing systems ending on December 2, 2026, according to the Commission. The Commission and the AI Board are to assess the Code of Practice.
Sources
- European Commission: Code of Practice on transparency of AI-generated content (FAQ) (opens in a new tab)
- Cooley: EU AI Act: Transparency Obligations Take Effect 2 August 2026 (opens in a new tab)
Law-firm commentary, read in search summary only.