AI watermarking and deepfake labelling will soon be required by law in the EU as the transparency part of the bloc’s sweeping AI Act comes into force on August 2nd.

AI watermarking and deepfake labelling will soon be required by law in the EU as the transparency part of the bloc’s sweeping AI Act comes into force on August 2nd. Anyone living in the EU will become better informed about when they are dealing with AI, under new rules that come into force on August 2nd. Under the terms of the AI Act: “AI providers will have to design AI systems to inform users when they are directly interacting with AI and they will have to add machine-readable marks to enable the detection of AI-generated or manipulated content”. Any website, customer service department, or government agency using a chatbot must inform users that they are interacting with an AI - rather than a real person - unless there is already no doubt that AI is involved (for example, if users are given the message 'ask our AI chatbot for more information' or similar). Such information must be clearly displayed at the appropriate time, and easily understood. It is the chatbot provider’s responsibility to design it in such a way that the user receives this information. It should be noted this is for all new chatbots operating in the EU from August 2nd. Existing ones have until December 2026 to comply with the legislation. Many already do. Any image, video, sound, or text produced by an automated system must be identifiable as such by a technical mark that will allow their artificial origin to be traced. This traceability mark could take several forms: data embedded in the file, information about its origin, or a technical watermark, accessible to verification tools. Crucially, this information must remain intact even if the original is cropped or otherwise altered.