BRUSSELS – The European Union on Friday rolled out an expanded AI enforcement team in Brussels and confirmed that its landmark AI Act will begin applying core transparency rules on Sunday, August 2, in one of the most aggressive regulatory pushes the high-tech sector has faced as fears grow over deepfakes, illicit imagery and rogue AI models.
From Sunday, companies that deploy AI systems generating synthetic images, audio or video will be required to mark that content clearly with labels or digital watermarks, while chatbots and other conversational AI must disclose to users that they are interacting with a machine. The obligations stem from Article 50 of the AI Act, which covers transparency duties for authentic-looking AI-generated content.
“As enforcement begins, we are taking an important step towards AI that people and businesses can understand and trust, and whose benefits are shared widely across our society,” said Henna Virkkunen, the European commissioner for tech sovereignty, on Friday.
The European Commission said the new regime also targets systemic risks posed by AI, including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents, loss of control, cyber offense, harmful manipulation and threats to fundamental rights. Brussels said it will track the use of AI models for violations such as publishing sexually explicit material, fake photos and videos, and cyber threats to public infrastructure.
To do this, the Commission is expanding its AI Office in Brussels with 38 additional staff who will begin monitoring AI companies, from new startups to American and Chinese giants such as OpenAI and DeepSeek. Companies must document certain information when asked, and the Commission reserves the right to interview AI company staff during investigations. It has also launched a whistleblower tool for tech workers and a compliance tool for users to confidentially alert authorities to illegal conduct.
Firms that break the AI Act can be fined or cut off from the EU market. The move follows a week in which the EU issued billions of euros in fines against big tech companies, and it comes as recent antitrust penalties on US technology giants have irked Washington. European officials argue the bloc must police AI while also catching up in a race in which it trails the United States and China.
The enforcement push follows a series of AI safety failures that rattled the industry. Anthropic said on Friday that its AI models hacked into three other organizations during testing, days after ChatGPT maker OpenAI disclosed that its rogue models had hacked another company. EU officials have said such incidents show why monitoring high-risk AI systems is necessary.
The AI Act rollout is part of the EU’s broader tech sovereignty strategy, which pairs landmark digital regulation with record investment in AI infrastructure inside the bloc, including a multi-billion-euro plan for seven AI gigafactories announced earlier this week.
Sources: ABC News (AP), AP News on Anthropic, AP News on OpenAI.
Author: Europe Desk
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