Dear Readers,

I hope you had a great summer! While you were travelling, hiking, swimming or simply resting, article 50 of the AI Act has entered into force, which means that a number of transparency obligations are applicable.

1. YOUR ROLE. First things first: are you an AI provider or an AI deployer?

• A provider of AI systems is a natural or legal person that develops an AI system or a general-purpose AI model or that has an AI system or a general-purpose AI model developed and places it on the market or puts the AI system into service under its own name or trademark; while
• A deployer is a natural or legal person using an AI system under its authority, except where the AI system is used in the course of a personal non-professional activity.

Providers and deployers have different obligations, which are summarized below.

2. PROVIDER’S OBLIGATIONS.

• Providers must ensure that AI systems intended to interact directly with natural persons are designed so that those persons are informed they are interacting with an AI system, unless this is obvious from the point of view of a reasonably well-informed, observant and circumspect person.
• Providers of AI systems that generate synthetic audio, image, video or text content must ensure that outputs are marked in a machine-readable format and detectable as artificially generated or manipulated. Technical solutions must be effective, interoperable, robust and reliable, as far as technically feasible.

Providers have started to comply and use different technical solutions. Anthropic, for example, is using a watermarking technique, while Open AI and Google are using different strategies. No single marking technique meets Article 50(2) requirements of effectiveness, interoperability, robustness and reliability, and only an appropriate combination of techniques and detection mechanisms can satisfy them. Some point to a clear “Brussels effect” where the AI Act ends up applying beyond its scope.

3. DEPLOYER’S OBLIGATIONS.

• Deployers of emotion recognition or biometric categorization systems must inform the natural persons exposed to the system of its operation and must process personal data in accordance with the GDPR and any other applicable data protection laws.
• Deployers of AI systems that generate or manipulate image, audio or video content constituting a deep fake must disclose that the content has been artificially generated or manipulated. For evidently artistic, creative, satirical, fictional or analogous works, the obligation is limited to appropriate disclosure that does not hamper the display or enjoyment of the work.
• Deployers of AI systems that generate or manipulate text published to inform the public on matters of public interest must disclose the artificial nature of the content, unless the content has undergone human review or editorial control and a natural or legal person holds editorial responsibility.

All information must be provided in a clear and distinguishable manner, at the latest at the time of the first interaction or exposure.

The AI Office is tasked with encouraging codes of practice at Union level to facilitate the effective implementation of obligations regarding the detection and labelling of artificially generated or manipulated content. In fact, the voluntary Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-generated Content has already been signed by 190+ organizations and has been found by the EU Commission and the AI Office as an effective tool to aid compliance with article 50 of the AI Act.

In a world where AI systems have started to go rogue, perhaps the AI Act – with all its constraints to AI technology – can offer reassurance that the EU continues to pursue a human-centric, trustworthy AI.