Signal Commission publishes guidelines on transparency obligations for providers and deployers of certain AI systems (AI Act Article 50)

Summary

The European Commission adopted guidelines on 20 July 2026 for the transparency obligations in Article 50 of the AI Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689. Providers must inform users when they are interacting directly with AI in the form of chatbots, agents or avatars, and must embed machine-readable marking in generated content. Deployers must label deepfakes and AI-generated text on matters of public interest that lack human editorial oversight, and must disclose exposure to emotion recognition and biometric categorisation systems. The obligations apply from 2 August 2026, with systems released before that date given until 2 December 2026 to meet content labelling requirements. Enforcement falls to national market surveillance authorities, the AI Office for systems under its supervision, and the European Data Protection Supervisor for EU institutional providers and deployers. The Commission and the European AI Board approved the Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content, published on 10 July 2026, as one route for organizations to demonstrate compliance.