August 2 is crunch time for GenAI in Europe

Article 50 of the AI Act applies from 2 August 2026. It requires AI generated material is labelled clearly as AI-generated. Many think it only applies to deep fakes, but that's not true. Some people go further and think it is limited to AI visuals which depict real objects or people. It's bigger: All AI systems must inform you that they are AI if you interact directly with them. All AI-generated artwork and videos must have a mark indicated created by AI. This is only a machine readable mark - but you know browsers will add an auto-detect capability, especially browsers like Brave and Firefox. All content written by AI must say it was written by AI if it contains "matters of public interest". There is an on exception on artwork and video for "business to business" and "industrial context" (whatever that is, no one is sure). "These obligations are intended to foster trust and integrity in the information ecosystem. People should know when they are interacting with AI or exposed to AI-generated content. This will help them make informed decisions, calibrate their trust and reliance on AI and avoid mis information or deception." https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/guidelines-transparency-ai-generated-content US companies will comply. The EU is too big a market to pull out of. They will probably just do this for all output globally to avoid the hassle of trying to geo-fence compliant material off from the rest. This will hammer the ad industry, which is heavy into AI ads. Tests show that people dislike images if they know it is AI generated, even if they like the same artwork when they think a human made it. I guarrantee things like AdBlock will add a detector.