EU — Content Labeling and Provenance

Regulatory tiers

• Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act): in force Aug 1, 2024; article 50 sets out the transparency and labeling obligations.
• Core timeline for art. 50: applies from Aug 2, 2026 (general deployer obligations), consistent with the regulation’s staggered applicability.
• Accompanying standards: the European standardisation organisations (CEN-CENELEC JTC 21) are developing harmonised standards for “machine-readable and robust labeling”; once published, they will produce a presumption of conformity.
• Adjacent regulations: the Digital Services Act imposes synthetic-content distribution obligations on very large online platforms (VLOPs); the 2024 revised Product Liability Directive links at the defect-liability layer.

Obligor scope (art. 50)

• Provider: the provider of a generative AI system placed on the EU market.
• Deployer: an entity deploying deepfakes or AI-generated text on matters of public interest.
• Disclosure to natural persons: when the system interacts with a natural person, that person must be informed that they are “interacting with an AI system” (unless evident from context).

Core obligations

1. Providers must: mark machine-generated / synthetic audio, image, video, or text output in a machine-readable way, and the marking must be “effective, interoperable, robust, and reliable” (art. 50(2)).
2. Deployers must:
   • When deploying deepfakes, disclose that the content is AI-generated or manipulated (art. 50(4)); works of art or satire qualify for an exception but disclosure must not disturb appreciation of the work.
   • When AI-generated text is used on matters of public interest, disclose its synthetic nature unless it has undergone human review and a person has taken editorial responsibility.
3. Emotion recognition and biometric categorisation carry separate disclosure obligations (art. 50(3)).

Exemptions and exceptions

• Partial exemption for law-enforcement use in detection, prevention, investigation, or prosecution of crime.
• Manifestly artistic, fictional, satirical, or analogous creative works receive weakened disclosure obligations for deepfakes (not eliminated, but in a form that does not disturb artistic appreciation).

Enforcement bodies and penalties

• Market surveillance: member-state-designated market surveillance authorities.
• Coordination: the AI Office (within the Commission) and the European AI Board.
• Maximum penalties: for breaches of transparency duties, fines of up to €15,000,000 or 3% of global annual turnover, whichever is higher (art. 99).