AI Act enforcement begins 2 August 2026: transparency obligations for AI systems and AI-generated content now active
From 2 August 2026, the European Commission's AI Office and national authorities began enforcing the AI Act, including binding transparency rules for AI systems. Operators of chatbots and interactive AI systems must now disclose to users that they are interacting with AI; deepfakes must be labelled; and AI-generated or AI-altered content must carry machine-readable marks. Businesses must review their AI deployments immediately to ensure disclosure mechanisms and content-marking are in place, as enforcement is active from this date.
What changed
- AI Act enforcement is now active (from 2 August 2026), carried out jointly by the European Commission's AI Office and national competent authorities.
- Chatbots and other interactive AI systems are required to inform users they are interacting with AI, not a human.
- Deepfakes (AI-edited or AI-generated images, video, or audio) must be explicitly labelled as such.
- AI-generated or AI-altered content must carry machine-readable marks to enable automated detection.
- The Commission published a first list of over 180 organisations that have signed the Code of Practice on transparency of AI-generated content, operationalising the new transparency rules.
Who is affected
EU-wide; providers and deployers of AI systems — particularly operators of chatbots, generative AI tools, and content-manipulation systems — across all sectors. Compliance officers and legal teams responsible for AI Act obligations under the ai_act standard.
- Effective
- 2026-08-02
- Action
- Action required
- Language
- EN