Symbolic imageEU labelling duty for AI-generated content takes effect
EU rules obliging professional developers and business users to label AI-generated content took effect on Sunday. Companies now face open questions about how to apply them.
What happened
- The EU's AI regulation was adopted a little more than two years ago; this provision applies from Sunday, 2 August.
- Systems interacting directly with people, such as customer-service chatbots and augmented reality, need banners like "You are interacting with an AI system", or an audio equivalent.
- Systems generating images or AI text summaries face lighter rules: a note in the file metadata only.
- That metadata is invisible in the document itself but readable in file settings and detectable automatically by software.
- Brussels has proposed label logos, an "AI" badge among them, but users may choose their own form.
The view from outside
The German business paper Handelsblatt frames the start mainly through the compliance pitfalls facing companies, while Le Monde focuses on the visual form the labels will take.
What could happen next
- Handelsblatt reports unresolved pitfalls for businesses applying the rules; its available text does not specify which.
- Whether firms adopt the Brussels logos or their own wording is left to them.
- Metadata-only labelling is invisible to readers unless software reads the file, leaving practical visibility unsettled.