Does Article 50 Apply to You? Find Your Situation
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Does Article 50 apply to you? Only if you do specific things with AI: run AI that talks directly to people, provide AI that generates content, or publish deep fakes or AI-generated public-interest text without editorial review. Purely personal use is excluded. The free Article50.io scan loads one public page in a real browser and shows the most severe finding.
Two businesses in the same sector can have completely different exposure, and many have none. Answer three questions, then find your situation below.
Three questions that decide it
If the answer to all three is no, Article 50's obligations covered here don't apply to you. Purely personal, non-professional use is excluded too (Art. 2(10)).
Find your situation
- SaaS companiesApplies if you run an AI chat widget or ship AI features that talk to users or generate content.
- AI startupsApplies if you put an AI product into service under your own name — which likely makes you its provider.
- AgenciesApplies if you build chatbots or produce realistic AI content that goes live on client sites.
- PublishersApplies if you publish AI-generated public-interest text without human editorial review, or realistic AI images.
- YouTubers & video creatorsApplies if you publish realistic AI video, voice clones or photorealistic avatars.
- PodcastersApplies if you use AI-cloned or synthetic voices that listeners would take as real recordings.
- Ecommerce storesApplies if you run an AI shopping assistant or use realistic AI-generated product imagery.
- Marketing teamsApplies if your campaigns use realistic AI-generated people, voices, places or events.
Your role matters as much as your sector
Article 50 splits duties between providers — who develop an AI system, or have one developed, and put it into service under their own name (Art. 3(3)) — and deployers, who use an AI system under their authority (Art. 3(4)). Providers carry 50(1) and 50(2); deployers carry 50(4). See transparency obligations under Article 50 for the full picture, and does Article 50 apply outside the EU? if you're not based in the EU.
If you've seen Article 50 described as the AI Act's “limited risk” tier, see EU AI Act limited risk for how the risk tiers map to the Act.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Article 50 apply to every business that uses AI?
No. Article 50 is triggered by specific uses: AI systems that interact directly with people, AI systems that generate synthetic content, and publishing deep fakes or AI-generated public-interest text. A business whose AI does none of those — or that uses no AI at all — has no Article 50 exposure.
Does Article 50 apply to personal use?
No. The AI Act doesn't apply to the obligations of deployers who are natural persons using AI systems in the course of a purely personal, non-professional activity.
Does it apply if my business is outside the EU?
It can. Under Article 2(1)(a) and (c), the Act reaches providers placing AI systems on the EU market and providers and deployers whose AI system's output is used in the EU. How that applies to websites merely accessible from the EU isn't settled.
Check your site automatically
Article50.io is an automated scanner for the Article 50 transparency rules of the EU AI Act. It scans a website for potential Article 50 transparency gaps and generates a report of what the scan found and what it could not check, with remediation guidance, implementation instructions and disclosure wording you can paste in.
The free scan shows your single most severe finding. Scans are capped at 45 seconds — no signup, public pages only.
Related Article 50 resources
- Art. 50EU AI Act Article 50 (Art. 50): Full Text & Plain-English Explanation
- Art. 50Article 50 Transparency Obligations: Provider vs Deployer
- Q&A · ScopeDoes Article 50 Apply to US Companies? (EU AI Act)
- ChecklistArticle 50 Compliance Checklist — What Your Site Needs to Disclose
Automated technical guidance, not legal advice. Citations refer to Regulation (EU) 2024/1689.