What Article 50 requires

The obligation on whoever built the generator

Article 50(2), first sentence:

“Providers of AI systems, including general-purpose AI systems, generating synthetic audio, image, video or text content, shall ensure that the outputs of the AI system are marked in a machine-readable format and detectable as artificially generated or manipulated.”

That is aimed at Midjourney, OpenAI, Adobe, Stability. Not at you. If you are reading this because you sell prints, you are not a “provider” of an AI system.

It matters to you anyway, for a practical reason. Those providers do mark their output — and the marking is gone by the time the image reaches your listing. It does not survive a crop in Canva, an export from Figma, a screenshot, or most marketplace resizers. The obligation was met upstream and the evidence evaporated somewhere between the generator and the buyer.

The obligation on you

Article 50(4), first subparagraph:

“Deployers of an AI system that generates or manipulates image, audio or video content constituting a deep fake shall disclose that the content has been artificially generated or manipulated.”

“Deployer” is the term for someone using an AI system under their own authority in a professional capacity. Running Midjourney to make product imagery for a shop puts you squarely in it.

The carve-out for creative work

The same subparagraph goes on to narrow the obligation, and this is the sentence most likely to apply to someone selling art:

“Where the content forms part of an evidently artistic, creative, satirical, fictional or analogous work or programme, the transparency obligations set out in this paragraph are limited to disclosure of the existence of such generated or manipulated content in an appropriate manner that does not hamper the display or enjoyment of the work.”

Read that carefully, because it is narrower than it first looks. It does not remove the obligation. It caps what the obligation can demand: you disclose that generated content is present, and nobody can require you to stamp the face of the artwork to do it. A line in the listing is enough. A watermark across the image is not required of you.

The word carrying the weight is evidently. A print sold as a print is evidently a creative work. A photograph of a mug on a white background, presented as what the buyer will receive, is not — it is doing the job of product documentation, and the carve-out has nothing to grip.

There is a second subparagraph requiring disclosure of AI-generated text published to inform the public on matters of public interest. Product descriptions are not that, so it does not reach a shop listing.

What compliance looks like in practice

Two things, and they are separate:

• 1Machine-readable marking in the file. IPTC DigitalSourceType in an XMP packet, which is what the labeler writes. This is the part the regulation expects to be detectable without a human reading anything.
• 2A disclosure a person can read, where the content is published. A line in the listing description. Article 50(5) requires it to be provided clearly and distinguishably, at the latest at the time of first interaction. Buried at the bottom under the shipping table is arguably neither.

Dates

Penalties

Article 99(4) sets the ceiling for breaching Article 50 at €15M or 3% of total worldwide annual turnover for the preceding financial year, whichever is higher. Article 99(6) says that for SMEs and start-ups the applicable figure is the lower of the two, which for almost every reader of this page means 3% of turnover rather than fifteen million euro.

Fines are also not the realistic risk. National market surveillance authorities have to be designated, staffed and pointed at a problem before anyone issues one, and small image sellers are a long way down that queue. What is likely to happen first is a marketplace enforcing its own policy — which it can do this afternoon, without a hearing. That is the near-term exposure.

What is genuinely unclear

• Whether ordinary AI-generated product imagery counts as a deep fake under Article 3(60). The definition appears to cover it; nobody has enforced it either way yet.
• How much AI involvement makes a photograph "manipulated". Generative fill on a background is clearly in. Automatic exposure correction is clearly out. Between those, nobody has drawn the line.
• Whether the marketplace or the seller is the deployer when the marketplace generates imagery on the seller's behalf.
• What "clearly and distinguishably" means on a mobile listing page where descriptions are collapsed behind a tap.