The European Commission has published the final version of its Code of Practice on marking and labelling AI-generated content, the playbook companies are meant to follow when the AI Act's transparency rules take effect on 2 August 2026. The Commission released the code on 10 June 2026, and it is now being assessed by the Commission and the AI Board for whether it adequately supports compliance.
The code is voluntary, which is the first thing worth understanding about it. Signing on does not replace the law. It offers providers and deployers of generative AI a concrete way to meet obligations that are about to become mandatory, rather than leaving each company to invent its own approach.
What the rules ask for
Two duties sit at the center. Deepfakes and AI-generated or AI-manipulated text published on matters of public interest must be clearly labelled, so a reader knows the material was made or altered by a machine. And people must be told when they are talking to an interactive AI system, such as a chatbot, rather than a human. Both flow from Article 50 of the AI Act, the part of the regulation devoted to transparency.
To make labelling practical, the Commission also released a set of free icons that creators and platforms can attach to AI-generated content. The icons form part of Section 2 of the code and are meant to give the public a recognisable visual cue across services, the way a recycling symbol does on packaging.
A staggered timeline
The transparency provisions arrive on 2 August 2026, but the marking and watermarking expectations have their own runway. Generative AI systems already on the market before that date are required to comply with watermarking duties as of 2 December 2026, giving providers a few extra months to retrofit existing products.
The code lands during a busy stretch for the AI Act. In May, EU lawmakers reached a political agreement on an "omnibus" package that simplifies parts of the regulation and pushes back some high-risk compliance deadlines, a shift we covered when the United States took a lighter-touch route of its own. Europe is still the stricter regime, but the contrast is less stark than it was a year ago.
For anyone building generative tools, the practical message is simple. Watermarking and clear disclosure are no longer optional niceties in the European market. They are about to be the cost of doing business, and the Commission has now handed out a manual for getting there.
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