The AI labeling obligation under Article 50 of the EU AI Act has applied since 2 August 2026. AI content labeling software implements it technically: it marks AI-generated images, video, audio, and text in a machine-readable format and makes it visible to users that a piece of content was artificially generated or manipulated. Providers of generative AI systems must mark their outputs so they remain detectable as synthetic.
The target audience includes providers of generative AI, newsrooms, agencies, and marketing teams, along with any company publishing AI content. The benefit lies in a reliable provenance chain: writing a signature to the C2PA standard into the content makes it possible to show later what created an asset and how it was edited. For deepfakes and for text published to inform the public on matters of public interest, the EU AI Act additionally requires disclosure that a person can recognize.
To be included in the AI Content Labeling category, a solution should offer the following features:
- Machine-readable marking: Watermarks or metadata signatures in image, video, audio, and text that survive ordinary downstream processing.
- Visible disclosure: Labels, overlays, or notices on the published content, including deepfake disclosure.
- C2PA provenance: Content Credentials carrying a signature plus creation and edit history.
- Verification: Reading existing marks to establish an asset's origin and editing state.
- Publishing workflow integration: Interfaces or plugins for CMS, DAM, and generation tools so labeling applies automatically at publish time.
