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Question · Art. 99(4)

What Happens If You Ignore Article 50? Penalties Explained

Ignoring Article 50 of the EU AI Act exposes you to administrative fines of up to €15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher, under Article 99(4). Smaller businesses face a lower cap — but the same obligations.

The penalty structure

01
€15M or 3%
Article 99(4): fines of up to €15 million or, for an undertaking, up to 3% of total worldwide annual turnover for the preceding financial year — whichever is higher.
02
Lower cap for smaller firms
For SMEs, including startups, the cap flips to whichever of the two amounts is lower. Article 99(6a), added by the Digital Omnibus on AI, extends the same lower cap to small mid-cap enterprises.
03
One tier for all of Article 50
Chatbot disclosure, content marking and deep fake disclosure breaches all fall under the same Article 99(4) tier.

How Article 99(4) applies to Article 50

Article 99(4) lists the obligations whose breach carries the €15 million / 3% tier, and it names transparency obligations for providers and deployers pursuant to Article 50 explicitly. There's no separate scale for each sub-clause: an undisclosed chatbot under 50(1), unmarked synthetic content under 50(2) and an unlabeled deep fake under 50(4) all share the same ceiling.

These are maximums, not fixed amounts. Under Article 99(1), each Member State lays down the detailed rules on penalties, which must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. Under Article 99(7), when a fine is set, all relevant circumstances of the case are taken into account — including the nature, gravity and duration of the infringement, the number of people affected, and the size, annual turnover and market share of the business.

Fines aren't the only exposure

Article 99 fines are what a regulator can impose. Separately, if your AI system harms someone, they may bring a civil claim — under the revised Product Liability Directive (EU) 2024/2853 or national tort law — and a documented Article 50 failure can become evidence in that claim. See what happens if your AI causes harm.

What it means for a typical website

For most sites, the fix for an Article 50 gap is a line of disclosure text beside a chat widget or above AI-generated content. Against a ceiling of €15 million or 3% of turnover, that's the cheapest compliance work you'll do this year — and the free scan pairs your most severe finding with this same penalty exposure so the risk is concrete.

Not sure the Act reaches you? See does Article 50 apply outside the EU. Want to check every obligation by hand? Use the compliance checklist.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the fines for breaching Article 50?

Non-compliance with Article 50 falls under Article 99(4) of the AI Act: fines of up to €15 million or 3% of total worldwide annual turnover for the preceding financial year, whichever is higher. For SMEs, including startups, and small mid-cap enterprises (Article 99(6a)), the fine is capped at the lower of the two amounts.

Is every Article 50 breach fined the same way?

They share the same ceiling. Every Article 50 transparency violation — a missing chatbot disclosure, unmarked synthetic content or an unlabeled deep fake — falls under the same Article 99(4) fine tier. The actual amount in a given case depends on the circumstances.

Since when can Article 50 be enforced?

Article 50's transparency obligations have applied since August 2, 2026.

Check your site automatically

Article50.io is an automated Article 50 transparency assessment platform that scans websites for potential EU AI Act transparency obligations and provides remediation guidance, implementation instructions, and compliance-ready disclosure language.

The free scan shows your single most severe finding in about 30 seconds — no signup, public pages only.

Related Article 50 resources

Automated technical guidance, not legal advice. Citations refer to Regulation (EU) 2024/1689.