CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: article 50 ai act

  • AI Act Code of Practice Timeline: 2026 Compliance Guide

    The AI Act code of practice covering transparency of AI-generated content moved from a draft published 8 May 2026, through a stakeholder consultation that closed 3 June 2026, to a final text published 10 June 2026 — all ahead of 2 August 2026, when Article 50’s transparency obligations become legally binding across the EU. The AI Act code of practice on transparency is a voluntary, European Commission-facilitated compliance tool, distinct from the earlier General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, that helps providers and deployers of generative AI systems meet the marking, detection and labelling duties set out in Regulation (EU) 2024/1689.

    For research offices, publishers and institutional communications teams, this is not an abstract EU process. Article 50 reaches any organisation whose AI-generated text, audio, image or video content reaches people in the EU — including AI-assisted research summaries and funder communications. This guide walks through the timeline as a compliance-planning tool.

    What is the AI Act code of practice on transparency?

    The Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content is a non-binding framework drafted by independent experts, generative AI providers, deployer associations, civil society bodies and academics, facilitated by the EU AI Office. It gives organisations a recognised way to demonstrate compliance with Article 50 of the AI Act without waiting for harmonised technical standards to be finalised.

    This is a separate instrument from the General-Purpose AI (GPAI) Code of Practice under Article 56, published in final form on 10 July 2025 and applying to GPAI model providers since 2 August 2025. Confusing the two is a common error in searches for “AI Act code of practice” — the table below sets out the difference.

    Feature GPAI Code of Practice (Article 56) Transparency Code of Practice (Article 50)
    Legal basis Article 56, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 Article 50, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689
    Audience Providers of general-purpose AI models Providers and deployers of generative AI systems
    Final text published 10 July 2025 10 June 2026
    Obligations apply from 2 August 2025 2 August 2026
    Core focus Safety, copyright, transparency documentation for models Marking, detection and labelling of AI-generated content

    The transparency code is organised around two working groups mirroring Article 50’s structure: Working Group 1 covers providers’ obligations to mark AI-generated audio, image, video and text in a machine-readable, detectable format; Working Group 2 covers deployers’ obligations to label deepfakes and AI-generated text on matters of public interest.

    What changed in the May 2026 draft guidelines?

    On 8 May 2026, the European Commission published draft implementation guidelines on Article 50 alongside the near-final Code of Practice text. These guidelines are the Commission’s own interpretive document — distinct from the stakeholder-drafted Code — clarifying how the transparency obligations apply in practice.

    The May draft addressed several points that had been ambiguous through the drafting rounds that ran from November 2025 to March 2026:

    • How “AI system” is scoped for the purposes of the human-interaction disclosure duty in Article 50(1);
    • The deepfake definition, including where content depicting real persons, places or events would falsely appear authentic;
    • The editorial-responsibility carve-out, under which AI-generated text on matters of public interest need not be labelled if it has undergone human review and is subject to editorial responsibility;
    • Expectations that marking techniques be interoperable, robust and reflect the “generally acknowledged state of the art” rather than a single mandated technology.

    What did the consultation closing 3 June 2026 cover?

    The Commission’s consultation on the May draft guidelines closed on 3 June 2026, giving providers, deployers, standards bodies and civil society a final window to flag practical gaps before the text was locked. In parallel, the multi-stakeholder drafting process for the Code of Practice itself held its closing plenary, and the AI Office published the final Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content on 10 June 2026.

    This timing is deliberate: the guidelines interpret what Article 50 legally requires, while the Code offers voluntary methods — marking formats, labelling icons, detection mechanisms — for meeting those requirements. Signing the Code is optional; complying with Article 50 by 2 August 2026 is not.

    What applies from 2 August 2026 — and where is there a grace period?

    From 2 August 2026, Article 50 becomes legally applicable across all EU member states. Providers must ensure outputs of generative AI systems are marked in a machine-readable format detectable as artificially generated or manipulated. Deployers must disclose deepfakes and label AI-generated or manipulated text published on matters of public interest, unless a human has reviewed the content and taken editorial responsibility for it.

    One practical relief applies to systems already in the market. Legal trackers monitoring the rollout report that generative AI systems placed on the market before 2 August 2026 have until 2 December 2026 to retrofit the machine-readable marking requirement under Article 50(2) — a four-month bridge for legacy tooling rather than a change to the core application date.

    How should research offices prepare?

    Research administration, publisher and funder-communications teams should treat 2 August 2026 as a hard planning date, not a distant EU milestone. The obligations bite wherever AI-generated text, images or audio reach an EU audience — including institutional websites, funder newsletters, and AI-assisted drafting workflows.

    • Inventory every generative AI tool used to produce public-facing text, images, audio or video, and confirm whether outputs are already machine-readably marked;
    • Map authorship and editorial-review workflows against the human-review carve-out, so genuinely human-edited content is not mislabelled as AI-generated;
    • Align AI-use disclosure practices in manuscripts and grant narratives with existing publisher policies (for example, ICMJE and COPE guidance on declaring generative AI assistance), since Article 50 labelling and authorship disclosure are converging expectations;
    • Confirm with vendors supplying AI writing, transcription or media tools whether their systems will meet the marking requirement by 2 August 2026 or fall under the 2 December 2026 legacy window;
    • Assign clear internal ownership — communications, legal/compliance, and research integrity offices each hold part of this obligation and need a shared owner before August.

    Answer-first questions on the AI Act code of practice

    What is the EU AI Act code of practice?

    The EU AI Act code of practice on transparency is a voluntary framework, facilitated by the AI Office, that helps providers and deployers of generative AI systems meet Article 50’s marking, detection and labelling duties. It was finalised on 10 June 2026, ahead of the 2 August 2026 application date, and sits alongside a separate GPAI Code of Practice covering model-level obligations under Article 56.

    Is there a UK equivalent to the AI Act code of practice?

    No. The UK has no AI-specific legislation equivalent to the EU AI Act; AI is instead regulated through existing sector frameworks. UK research institutions, publishers and vendors that publish AI-generated content reaching EU audiences, or that operate EU subsidiaries, must still meet Article 50’s transparency obligations from 2 August 2026.

    How does the transparency code relate to the AI Act’s risk categories?

    The AI Act classifies systems into four risk tiers — unacceptable, high, limited and minimal risk. Article 50’s transparency duties sit within the “limited risk” tier and apply horizontally to generative and interactive systems regardless of their risk classification elsewhere, which is why the transparency code applies more broadly than the high-risk rules.

    Implications and outlook

    The 2 August 2026 application date closes a year-long drafting process that began in September 2025 and ran through three formal drafting rounds before the May 2026 draft and June 2026 consultation. For research-adjacent organisations, the practical implication is less about the Code of Practice itself — which remains voluntary — and more about Article 50, which is not. Institutions that already maintain authorship-disclosure and editorial-review workflows for generative AI have a head start.

    Expect further guidance around the 2 December 2026 legacy-marking deadline, and continued convergence between AI Act transparency labelling and research-integrity disclosure norms from bodies such as ICMJE and COPE. Organisations tracking both processes together, rather than as separate compliance tracks, will be better placed for the obligations that follow.

    See CASRAI’s related coverage of research administration compliance workflows and authorship transparency disclosures for how generative AI disclosure expectations intersect with existing research-integrity practice.

  • AI Act Watermarking Obligations Delay: December 2026

    The AI Act watermarking obligations delay pushes Article 50(2) of the EU AI Act — the machine-readable marking duty for synthetic content — from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2026 for AI systems already on the market before that date. This is a narrow, four-month transitional concession agreed in the EU’s Digital Omnibus trilogue on 7 May 2026. It does not touch Article 50(1), the separate duty to disclose that a person is interacting with an AI system, which still applies from 2 August 2026 as originally scheduled.

    Article 50 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (the AI Act) is the transparency article governing four distinct duties: disclosure of AI interaction, machine-readable marking of synthetic content, deployer labelling of deepfakes, and labelling of AI-generated text on matters of public interest. Confusing these four sub-obligations — or confusing this watermarking delay with the separate, much longer postponement of high-risk AI system rules — is the most common compliance-timeline error research offices, publishers and institutional AI-governance teams are currently making.

    What actually changed in the Digital Omnibus trilogue

    The Council of the European Union and the European Parliament reached a provisional political agreement on the AI-related Digital Omnibus on 7 May 2026, after a nine-hour trilogue session held under the Cypriot Council Presidency. The text still requires formal endorsement by both institutions and legal-linguistic revision before it is published in the Official Journal, but its substance on watermarking is settled.

    The European Commission’s original November 2025 Digital Omnibus proposal sought a six-month postponement of the Article 50(2) marking obligation. The European Parliament’s negotiating mandate, adopted on 26 March 2026, pushed back for a shorter, three-month postponement. The trilogue compromise landed on four months, moving the application date for existing systems from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2026.

    This is a narrow, technical fix, not a policy reversal. The stated rationale is operational: the AI Office’s Code of Practice defining how to meet the marking duty is still being finalised, and providers argued they could not build machine-readable marking, metadata and detector tooling against guidance that had not yet stabilised.

    Article 50(2) watermarking vs Article 50(1) disclosure: the nuance

    This is the distinction research administrators need to track separately, because press coverage frequently blurs it. Article 50(1) and Article 50(2) are different obligations with different deadlines, and only one of them moved.

    Provision What it requires Who it binds Application date Delayed?
    Article 50(1) Inform natural persons they are interacting with an AI system (e.g. chatbots) Providers 2 August 2026 No — unchanged
    Article 50(2) Machine-readable marking of synthetic audio, image, video or text output, detectable as artificially generated Providers 2 December 2026 (existing systems) Yes — 4-month delay
    Article 50(3) Label deepfake image, audio or video content shown to the public Deployers 2 August 2026 No — unchanged
    Article 50(4) Label AI-generated text published to inform the public on matters of public interest Deployers 2 August 2026 No — unchanged

    In other words, the disclosure and labelling duties that sit closest to end-user and reader-facing transparency — telling a person they are talking to a bot, or flagging that an image is a deepfake — proceed on the original 2 August 2026 timetable. Only the upstream, provider-side technical marking duty in Article 50(2) has moved.

    Who is affected, and from what date

    The four-month extension operates as a transitional grace period, not a blanket new deadline. It applies specifically to generative AI systems already placed on the EU market before 2 August 2026. Providers bringing a new generative AI system to the EU market on or after 2 August 2026 must comply with Article 50(2) marking from the point of placement, with no transitional window.

    • Existing systems (on the EU market before 2 August 2026): Article 50(2) marking applies from 2 December 2026.
    • New systems (placed on the market from 2 August 2026 onward): Article 50(2) marking applies immediately from placement.
    • Article 50(1), 50(3) and 50(4) duties: unaffected, all apply from 2 August 2026 for every system in scope.

    The same Digital Omnibus package also postpones application of the AI Act’s high-risk system requirements — Annex III stand-alone systems now apply from 2 December 2027, and Annex I product-embedded systems from 2 August 2028. These are separate rules on an entirely separate track from Article 50 transparency, and conflating the two — as some commentary has done — materially understates how soon the watermarking duty actually bites.

    The Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content

    Article 50(2) compliance is operationalised through the AI Office’s Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content. A first draft was published in December 2025, with a further draft circulated in May 2026 as the trilogue concluded. The European Commission’s Digital Strategy portal lists the Code among its active transparency-obligation guidance as of June 2026.

    The technical benchmark most frequently cited in industry guidance for machine-readable marking is C2PA Content Credentials, a provenance specification backed by major generative-AI and platform providers. Whichever technical route a provider chooses, the compressed runway between a finalised Code of Practice and the 2 December 2026 application date means marking, metadata-embedding and detector-tooling work needs to start now rather than after final guidance lands.

    Answer-first questions

    Has the AI Act watermarking deadline been delayed?

    Yes. Article 50(2) of the EU AI Act, which requires machine-readable marking of AI-generated synthetic content, moves from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2026 for systems already on the market, under the Digital Omnibus trilogue agreement reached 7 May 2026.

    What is Article 50 of the AI Act?

    Article 50 is the AI Act’s transparency article. It sets four separate obligations: disclosing AI interaction, marking synthetic content, labelling deepfakes, and labelling AI-generated public-interest text — each with its own scope and, now, its own timetable.

    Does the delay affect the AI chatbot disclosure rule?

    No. Article 50(1), which requires providers to inform users they are interacting with an AI system such as a chatbot, is not delayed and continues to apply from 2 August 2026, unchanged by the Digital Omnibus.

    What is the Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content?

    It is the AI Office’s guidance document operationalising Article 50 compliance, first drafted in December 2025 with further drafts through mid-2026. It is the practical reference providers use to meet the machine-readable marking requirement ahead of the 2 December 2026 deadline.

    Implications for research offices and publishers

    Institutions running AI-governance or research-integrity functions should treat this as a compliance-tracking, not a compliance-relief, event. Two separate dates now sit on the same calendar entry that many trackers previously listed as a single 2 August 2026 milestone. Research administration teams responsible for institutional AI-use policies, and publishers building AI-content-disclosure workflows alongside existing authorship-disclosure practices, need to record both dates and both scopes distinctly rather than treating “the AI Act deadline” as one event.

    • Update institutional compliance calendars to show 2 August 2026 (disclosure/labelling duties) and 2 December 2026 (marking duty for existing systems) as separate entries.
    • Distinguish the Article 50(2) watermarking delay from the much longer high-risk system postponement (2027/2028) when briefing leadership — the two are unrelated in scope and timing.
    • Track the AI Office’s Code of Practice finalisation, since the technical detail of “machine-readable” marking is defined there, not in the Regulation’s text.

    For institutions already documenting AI-content-disclosure alongside research-administration compliance tracking, the practical task is unchanged in substance and compressed in time: providers and deployers still need working marking and labelling capability, just against a marginally later date for one specific obligation.

    What happens next

    The Digital Omnibus text still requires formal endorsement and legal-linguistic revision before Official Journal publication, expected ahead of the original 2 August 2026 application date for the AI Act’s high-risk obligations. Once published, the 2 December 2026 date for Article 50(2) becomes fixed law rather than a trilogue compromise. Research offices, publishers and AI providers should treat the current text as the operative planning baseline, while watching for the AI Office’s final Code of Practice, which will determine exactly what “machine-readable” marking must look like in practice.