Guide · Article 50(1) · in force since 2 Aug 2026

Do you have to tell customers your chatbot is AI?

Yes. And the duty is already live. Since 2 August 2026, Article 50(1) of the EU AI Act requires anyone deploying an AI system that interacts with people to tell them so, clearly, no later than the first interaction. In our scan of 883 EU sites, 97% of online shops running a chat widget showed no disclosure wording at all.

The rule in one paragraph

Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 50(1): providers must design AI systems that interact with natural persons so that those persons are informed they are interacting with an AI system, unless that is obvious from the circumstances to a reasonably well-informed, observant person. The information has to be given in a clear and distinguishable manner at the latest at the time of the first interaction. The Digital Omnibus deferred most high-risk obligations to December 2027; it did not defer this one.

Whose problem is it: yours or your vendor's?

The uncomfortable answer: on your website, it is yours to get right. Chat platforms such as Gorgias, Intercom and Zendesk ship both human-routed and AI-agent modes. The vendor provides the disclosure setting; whether an AI mode is switched on, and whether the disclosure actually appears to your customers, is your workspace configuration. An outside regulator (or our scanner) sees only your site, not the vendor's intentions.

The "obvious from the circumstances" trap

The exemption sounds generous, but it is narrow: obvious to a reasonably well-informed person. A widget with a human name, a human avatar and "Hi, I'm Anna 👋" is arguing the opposite of obvious. If you rely on the exemption, write your reasoning down and date it. Under Article 4, the documentation is what an authority asks to see.

What it costs to ignore

Article 99(4) caps penalties for transparency breaches at €15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher, with amounts set nationally. Nobody fines a 10-person shop €15m on day one; the realistic sequence is a complaint, a letter, and a deadline. The duty itself costs about twenty minutes to meet.

The 20-minute fix

  1. Scan your site free. It fingerprints 36 chat vendors and checks for disclosure wording in 12 EU languages, entirely in your browser.
  2. Set your assistant's opening message to say it is an AI. Not the privacy policy. The first interaction requirement means the chat window itself.
  3. Check the vendor page for your platform for the exact console path to that setting.
  4. Record what you changed and when. The €49 Compliance Pack generates the wording in twelve languages, the per-vendor steps, a publishable transparency notice and the signed evidence record from your own scan.

Related duties on the clock

Article 50(2) machine-readable marking of AI-generated content reaches its transition deadline on 2 December 2026. That deadline, explained. And our own answer to this page's question is public: how we use AI on this website.