The EU just made AI introduce itself.
On August 2nd, Article 50 of the EU AI Act came into force. If your AI system interacts with customers in the EU, it must tell them they are talking to AI. This is not only for companies located in Europe: if you are outside the EU but your product serves the EU market, you are in scope. AI-generated content must also carry machine-readable marks.
Read that scope again. It covers more companies than most people think.
A practical detail: systems already on the market have until December 2nd to implement machine-readable marking.
In my opinion, this is a good move. It protects inexperienced users from fraud and manipulation. People should know when they are talking to a synthetic system (a term I am borrowing from sci-fi) and when to a human.
If you build AI features for EU customers: were you ready on August 2nd, or is this news to you?
First published on LinkedIn. Discussion on LinkedIn