What is Art. 50 EU AI Act?

Art. 50 is an article of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the EU AI Act. It sets out transparency obligations for certain AI systems – including those that interact directly with natural persons, such as chatbots or voice widgets. Unlike the risk classification that is otherwise central to the AI Act, the point here is not how "risky" an AI system is considered to be, but simply that users can recognise whether they are communicating with an AI or a human.

Specifically, Art. 50(1) requires providers and deployers of such systems to ensure that users are informed in a clear, distinguishable and accessible way that they are interacting with an AI system. For a website chatbot, this means in practice: before or while a visitor chats with the bot, it must be unmistakably recognisable that it is an AI – not an employee.

The obligation is deliberately broad: it potentially affects every company with an AI-powered chat or voice widget on its own website, regardless of sector or company size. It applies from 2 August 2026.

Art. 50 does not prescribe an exact wording – what matters is that the disclosure is actually noticed before or while the interaction takes place, not only afterwards or hidden elsewhere on the website.

If you want to know what this specifically means for your own website – from the question of who is affected to ready-made example wordings – you will find the full overview in the guide to the chatbot disclosure obligation.