The EU's AI transparency rules get teeth in six days
The EU's AI transparency rules get teeth in six days. On 2nd Aug’26, the EU AI Act's Article 50 transparency duties become enforceable, and the Commission's power to police general-purpose AI providers switches on the same day. June's Digital Omnibus amendments pushed the high-risk obligations out to December 2027 and August 2028. Telling users they're talking to an AI, machine-readable marking of AI-generated content, and labelling deepfakes all go live. Alongside it, the rules that have applied to model providers since Aug’25 stop being un-policed: the Commission can demand documentation, model access, and in the extreme order a model pulled from the EU market. Maximum penalty for either: €15 million or 3% of global annual turnover, whichever is higher. It applies to any business serving EU users, not just EU-based ones.
What it actually means
If you run a customer-facing chatbot for EU users, generate synthetic images or video for EU campaigns, or publish AI-written text on matters of public interest, your duties arrive in days, and they're small, doable work, not a conformity assessment. This week: put an AI-disclosure line in the chat surface itself, not buried in terms and conditions; check the tools you generate images and video with embed machine-readable marking, and that it survives your editing and export pipeline; and write the two-line policy that says synthetic media of real people gets a visible label. The GPAI enforcement switch matters even if you don't build models. If a model you depend on gets pulled from the EU market, your product inherits the disruption, so which provider you pick is now a compliance surface, not just a cost-and-quality one.
Source: Digital Applied (compiling EC, Morgan Lewis, Gibson Dunn, Latham & Watkins) · Monday 27 July 2026