A practical guide before the rules bite
The European Commission has published its AI content labelling Code of Practice, a voluntary playbook to help companies meet transparency rules that become law across the bloc on August 2, 2026. The Commission released the final Code on June 10, setting out concrete steps for businesses that build and use generative AI to mark and label what their systems produce.
Voluntary code, mandatory rules
The Code itself is optional; the obligations it points to are not. They sit under Article 50 of the EU AI Act and apply from August 2 whether or not a company signs the guidance - signing simply gives a business a recognized way to demonstrate compliance. From that date, two things must be clearly flagged: deepfakes and AI-generated or AI-manipulated text published on matters of public interest, and the fact that someone is interacting with an AI system such as a customer-service bot.
How the work is split
The Code divides responsibilities across the AI supply chain. Companies that build generative models are asked to mark their output in a machine-readable format so it can be detected downstream. Companies that deploy those models handle the visible labelling - which, for public-interest AI text, applies when content goes out without human review or editorial control. To keep it workable, the Code leans on open technical standards and a common EU icon, giving users a consistent visual cue rather than forcing each business to invent its own. As the Commission's tech-sovereignty chief framed it, Europeans have a right to know whether what they see, hear, or read was made or altered by AI, particularly when it can shape public debate.
What's still unsettled
This isn't the last word. The Code is open for signatures, still needs the Commission and the AI Board to deem it adequate, and will be accompanied by separate guidelines clarifying what it leaves out. Drawn up by six independent experts with input from more than 180 stakeholders, it's the first instrument to tackle AI content labelling under the Act - and with under two months until the deadline, companies serving European users have little slack to work out what they must label, and how.