What Changes on 2 August 2026 Under the EU AI Act

Two things become enforceable on 2 August 2026:

• Article 50 transparency obligations. AI systems that interact with people (chatbots, voice assistants) must disclose they are AI. Providers of systems generating synthetic audio, image, video or text must mark outputs as artificially generated in a machine-readable format (Art. 50(2)). Deepfakes must be visibly labeled. And people exposed to emotion recognition or biometric categorisation must be informed.
• GPAI enforcement powers (Article 101). The Commission's power to fine general-purpose AI model providers activates. GPAI obligations themselves have applied since 2 August 2025 — what changes now is that breaching them can cost up to €15M or 3% of worldwide turnover.

Article 50 breaches sit in the same €15M / 3% tier under Article 99(4). Check where you stand in two minutes with the Article 50 readiness checker.

Under the Act as adopted in 2024, 2 August 2026 was also meant to be the big high-risk date — the day the full Annex III obligations (risk management, data governance, Annex IV documentation, human oversight and the rest) became enforceable. That is no longer the case.

The Digital Omnibus, the EU's simplification package amending several digital laws at once, was formally adopted and signed on 8 July 2026. For the AI Act, its headline change is timing: obligations for Annex III high-risk systems moved to 2 December 2027, and those for high-risk systems that are safety components of regulated products (Annex I) to 2 August 2028. The stated rationale was that the standards and conformity-assessment infrastructure providers need — harmonised standards, notified bodies, national guidance — were not ready at scale, and enforcing against companies with no practical route to conformity would have been counterproductive.

What the Omnibus did not do is soften the substance. The Article 9–15 requirements are unchanged, the prohibited-practices list is unchanged, and the dates that had already passed (prohibitions from February 2025, GPAI duties from August 2025) were untouched. Article 50 and GPAI enforcement stayed on 2 August 2026. The postponement buys high-risk providers time; it does not buy anyone out of the transparency layer.

Within Article 50 there is a single grace period: providers of generative systems that were already on the market get until 2 December 2026 to implement machine-readable output marking under Art. 50(2). Everything else in Article 50 — chatbot disclosure, deepfake labels, emotion-recognition notices — applies in full from 2 August 2026, and new systems must mark outputs from day one. See the AI content-marking guide for how to actually implement marking.

By operator type:

• Anyone running a customer-facing chatbot or AI assistant in the EU — add a clear "you are talking to AI" disclosure before 2 August 2026. This is the cheapest duty in the Act and the easiest to spot-check from outside.
• Providers of generative AI features (image, video, audio or text generation) — implement machine-readable marking (C2PA/provenance metadata or watermarking). Already on the market? You have until 2 December 2026. Shipping after 2 August 2026? Mark from launch.
• Anyone publishing deepfakes — visible labels, not just metadata.
• Users of emotion recognition or biometric categorisation — inform affected people, and check Article 5 first: workplace and education uses of emotion recognition are prohibited outright.
• GPAI model providers — your Articles 53–55 duties are now backed by €15M / 3% fines; documentation, copyright policy and training-data summaries need to be genuinely in place.
• High-risk (Annex III) providers and deployers — your deadline is 2 December 2027, but an Article 9–15 programme takes months to build. Use the breathing room; don't waste it.

Start with the Article 50 readiness checker for the transparency layer, then classify your full system to see everything else that applies.