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What Article 50 requires

Two paragraphs of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 apply to anyone publishing a generated image. Here they are.

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), second 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 word doing the most work in that sentence is deep fake, and Article 3(60) defines it broadly: content resembling existing persons, objects, places, entities or events that would falsely appear authentic. An AI-generated photograph of a mug that looks like a photograph of a mug is inside that definition on a plain reading. Whether a regulator will read it that way for ordinary product imagery is not settled, and anyone telling you it is settled is guessing.

There is a further paragraph 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

1 August 2024The AI Act enters into force.

2 February 2025Prohibited practices and AI literacy obligations start applying.

2 August 2025General-purpose AI model obligations start applying. This is the one that landed on the model providers.

2 August 2026Article 50 transparency obligations start applying. This is your date.

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.

This page is a reading of the regulation, not advice on your situation. It was written by someone who builds tooling, not by a lawyer. If your exposure is material, pay a lawyer who will read your actual listings.

What each platform enforces

All docs