CHAPTER IV – Transparency obligations for providers and deployers of certain AI systems (Art. 50)

Certain AI systems intended to interact with natural persons or to generate content may pose specific risks of impersonation or deception irrespective of whether they qualify as high-risk or not. In certain circumstances, the use of these systems should therefore be subject to specific transparency obligations without prejudice to the requirements and obligations for high-risk AI systems and subject to targeted exceptions to take into account the special need of law enforcement. In particular, natural persons should be notified that they are interacting with an AI system, unless this is obvious from the point of view of a natural person who is reasonably well-informed, observant and circumspect taking into account the circumstances and the context of use. When implementing that obligation, the characteristics of natural persons belonging to vulnerable groups due to their age or disability should be taken into account to the extent the AI system is intended to interact with those groups as well. Moreover, natural persons should be notified when they are exposed to AI systems that, by processing their biometric data, can identify or infer the emotions or intentions of those persons or assign them to specific categories. Such specific categories can relate to aspects such as sex, age, hair colour, eye colour, tattoos, personal traits, ethnic origin, personal preferences and interests. Such information and notifications should be provided in accessible formats for persons with disabilities.

A variety of AI systems can generate large quantities of synthetic content that becomes increasingly hard for humans to distinguish from human-generated and authentic content. The wide availability and increasing capabilities of those systems have a significant impact on the integrity and trust in the information ecosystem, raising new risks of misinformation and manipulation at scale, fraud, impersonation and consumer deception. In light of those impacts, the fast technological pace and the need for new methods and techniques to trace origin of information, it is appropriate to require providers of those systems to embed technical solutions that enable marking in a machine readable format and detection that the output has been generated or manipulated by an AI system and not a human. Such techniques and methods should be sufficiently reliable, interoperable, effective and robust as far as this is technically feasible, taking into account available techniques or a combination of such techniques, such as watermarks, metadata identifications, cryptographic methods for proving provenance and authenticity of content, logging methods, fingerprints or other techniques, as may be appropriate. When implementing this obligation, providers should also take into account the specificities and the limitations of the different types of content and the relevant technological and market developments in the field, as reflected in the generally acknowledged state of the art. Such techniques and methods can be implemented at the level of the AI system or at the level of the AI model, including general-purpose AI models generating content, thereby facilitating fulfilment of this obligation by the downstream provider of the AI system. To remain proportionate, it is appropriate to envisage that this marking obligation should not cover AI systems performing primarily an assistive function for standard editing or AI systems not substantially altering the input data provided by the deployer or the semantics thereof.

Further to the technical solutions employed by the providers of the AI system, deployers who use an AI system to generate or manipulate image, audio or video content that appreciably resembles existing persons, objects, places, entities or events and would falsely appear to a person to be authentic or truthful (deep fakes), should also clearly and distinguishably disclose that the content has been artificially created or manipulated by labelling the AI output accordingly and disclosing its artificial origin. Compliance with this transparency obligation should not be interpreted as indicating that the use of the AI system or its output impedes the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom of the arts and sciences guaranteed in the Charter, in particular where the content is part of an evidently creative, satirical, artistic, fictional or analogous work or programme, subject to appropriate safeguards for the rights and freedoms of third parties. In those cases, the transparency obligation for deep fakes set out in this Regulation is limited to disclosure of the existence of such generated or manipulated content in an appropriate manner that does not hamper the display or enjoyment of the work, including its normal exploitation and use, while maintaining the utility and quality of the work. In addition, it is also appropriate to envisage a similar disclosure obligation in relation to AI-generated or manipulated text to the extent it is published with the purpose of informing the public on matters of public interest unless the AI-generated content has undergone a process of human review or editorial control and a natural or legal person holds editorial responsibility for the publication of the content.

Without prejudice to the mandatory nature and full applicability of the transparency obligations, the Commission may also encourage and facilitate the drawing up of codes of practice at Union level to facilitate the effective implementation of the obligations regarding the detection and labelling of artificially generated or manipulated content, including to support practical arrangements for making, as appropriate, the detection mechanisms accessible and facilitating cooperation with other actors along the value chain, disseminating content or checking its authenticity and provenance to enable the public to effectively distinguish AI-generated content.

The obligations placed on providers and deployers of certain AI systems in this Regulation to enable the detection and disclosure that the outputs of those systems are artificially generated or manipulated are particularly relevant to facilitate the effective implementation of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065. This applies in particular as regards the obligations of providers of very large online platforms or very large online search engines to identify and mitigate systemic risks that may arise from the dissemination of content that has been artificially generated or manipulated, in particular the risk of the actual or foreseeable negative effects on democratic processes, civic discourse and electoral processes, including through disinformation. The requirement to label content generated by AI systems under this Regulation is without prejudice to the obligation in Article 16(6) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 for providers of hosting services to process notices on illegal content received pursuant to Article 16(1) of that Regulation and should not influence the assessment and the decision on the illegality of the specific content. That assessment should be performed solely with reference to the rules governing the legality of the content.

Compliance with the transparency obligations for the AI systems covered by this Regulation should not be interpreted as indicating that the use of the AI system or its output is lawful under this Regulation or other Union and Member State law and should be without prejudice to other transparency obligations for deployers of AI systems laid down in Union or national law.