EU AI Act Article 50 enforcement

Article 50 of the EU AI Act became enforceable on 2 August 2026, imposing transparency obligations on chatbots, synthetic-media generators, emotion-recognition systems, and deepfake tools, with fines of up to €15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover for noncompliance. Providers of generative AI systems already on the market before 2 August have until 2 December 2026 to comply with the marking and detection obligation specifically; content published before 2 August does not require retroactive labeling. The EU's Digital Omnibus package deferred Annex III high-risk AI compliance deadlines to late 2027 and beyond, leading many organizations to assume all EU AI Act enforcement had been pushed back, when Article 50 arrived on its original schedule. The European Commission and AI Board confirmed the Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content as adequate for compliance; adherence is voluntary but the underlying obligations are legally binding, and refusing to sign is expected to be the more demanding route in practice. Google and OpenAI have both formally announced they signed or support the Code. Anthropic rolled out cryptographic text watermarking globally to comply, and the Act applies extraterritorially to US-based companies whose AI outputs reach EU users.