EU AI Act transparency requirements are now in force: What this means for communications and content production

2 August 2026 is a historic date in the European AI landscape. The EU AI Office and national supervisory authorities have officially begun enforcing the AI Act, and the transparency requirements under Article 50 have entered into force at the same time.

Breaches can lead to substantial penalties: fines may reach up to €15 million or 3% of a company’s worldwide annual turnover. The regulation applies to all organisations that use or provide AI systems within the EU.

01Article 50: Four key transparency requirements

The new rules focus on people’s right to know when they are dealing with AI or AI-generated content. The requirements fall into four areas:

• Interaction with AI: Chatbots, AI assistants and similar systems must be designed so that users immediately know they are interacting with AI, not a human.
• Synthetic content: AI-generated images, video and audio (including deepfake content) must carry a machine-readable mark so they can be identified as AI-made. For generative AI systems placed on the market before 2 August 2026, a transition period runs until 2 December 2026.
• Emotion recognition and biometric categorisation: Where these techniques are used, the people affected must be informed.
• AI-generated text of public interest: If an organisation publishes AI-generated text on topics of societal importance or public interest, this must be disclosed openly — unless the content has undergone an appropriate editorial process.

02Editorial responsibility lifts the labelling obligation

This last point is especially critical for communications teams. Under the regulation, the labelling obligation does not apply if the published text has undergone substantive human review and a natural or legal person holds editorial responsibility for it.

In practice, using AI for drafting or brainstorming does not require a label next to the published text — as long as a human stays in control (human-in-the-loop). If text is published directly without human review and editing, you enter a legal grey area.

AI does not replace the communicator. Instead, the communicator’s role shifts from mechanically writing routine copy towards strategic editing, quality assurance and publication coordination.

03Proof of Value: How Lyyli supports compliance

In many communications teams, AI use is fragmented. Ideas and drafts bounce around separate ChatGPT or Claude windows, and final approvals are chased by email or chat. That way of working leaves no documented trail of who approved the text and what human review it received.

Lyyli is not just a text generator. It is a full Communications Operating System. It addresses the challenges of the AI Act by bringing the entire process into one managed view:

• Documented approval process (Audit Trail): For every draft, you can see exactly who created, edited and approved it. This provides strong evidence that a human holds editorial responsibility for the published content.
• Secure, professional working environment: Lyyli is built for organisational use with security in mind. Customer data is protected with encryption in transit and at rest, and workspaces for different organisations are kept strictly separate. We process data in line with the GDPR and agreed terms.
• Transparent AI routes: On selected AI routes, we ensure customer-submitted content is not used to train language models and is not permanently stored in AI partners’ systems. We explain this and our data-handling principles openly on our Trust page.
• Brand control and consistent guidelines: Lyyli ensures AI always follows the organisation’s own brand guidelines and tone of voice. That helps prevent misleading or inconsistent communications.

Custom basic workflows or standalone chatbot windows cannot deliver the transparency and security a modern organisation needs in the new era that began on 2 August 2026. With a managed workflow, your communications stay secure, efficient and compliant.