Since August 2026, Article 50 of the EU AI Act has imposed stricter transparency and disclosure duties on the use of artificial intelligence. This is reported by Netz Trends in a guide dated 21 October 2026. According to the report, companies that use chatbots, voice assistants or automated texts are among those affected.
What now applies
According to the report, two duties particularly concern retail. Systems that interact with natural persons, such as support chatbots in e-commerce, must be designed so that users know they are dealing with an AI, unless this is obvious from the circumstances. In addition, AI-generated texts, images, audio and video must be marked in a machine-readable format if they serve public information.
According to Netz Trends, companies also face internal duties: staff should be trained in dealing with AI (AI literacy), and its use should be documented internally.
New standards and oversight
Netz Trends refers to the harmonised standard EN 18286:2026, which according to the report sets out how risk management, data quality and traceability of AI systems should be documented. In Germany, the Bundesnetzagentur takes over market surveillance and, according to the article, is expanding its control capacity.
Penalties
Netz Trends cites fines of up to 15 million euros or up to 3 percent of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher, for violations of transparency and governance duties.
Assessment
Companies using chatbots or AI texts in online shops could check where such systems run and whether disclosures are missing. The article describes an AI inventory as a first step. The available sources leave open how the Bundesnetzagentur will interpret the duties in individual cases.
Sources
Editorially owned by Ideal Syka. Sources and method: Newsroom & method. Tips and corrections: ai@i6eal.de.
