EU AI Act · the next binding date
2 December.
Two obligations bind.
One ends a grace period for generative AI already on the European market. The other adds a prohibition. Both are narrower than the headlines suggest, so check whether either reaches you before you buy anything.
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Grace period opensGrace period ends
Reading the signed obligation record…
What binds, from the signed record
Each line links to primary law
Read live from /corpus/obligations.json, the record we sign with Ed25519 and correct in public. Nothing on this page is typed by hand: if the law moves, the record moves, and this page with it.
Who it reaches
Three cases, in plain words
Reached
You provide a generative AI system (text, image, audio or video) that was on the EU market before 2 August 2026. From 2 December its outputs must carry machine-readable marking.
Already reached
Your generative system went on the EU market on or after 2 August 2026. You never had the grace period: marking has applied since launch.
Not reached by this
You do not generate content with AI, or you only use someone else's system without placing it on the market. Most businesses are here, and the check can tell you so.
The new prohibition is different in kind: no business may place on the market or use a system that generates intimate imagery of a real person without consent, or child sexual abuse material. A general-purpose generator is caught where that output is foreseeable and safeguards are missing.
Thirty seconds · at most eight questions
Does it reach your AI?
If it does
Ready before the date, not after
How to mark
What machine-readable marking means in practice: the standards in play, what to embed, where, and how to test that it survives.
Read the marking guide →Disclosure Pack
Disclosure wording drafted for your system, the machine-readable marking specification for its output, and a one-page record of what you did and when.
Get the packEvidence Pack
Your system assessed against the disclosure and marking duties, the accountable party named and the articles cited: the written record a procurement panel asks for.
Get the pack