EU AI Act · Article 50 · applies 2 August 2026

Article 50 in Code

Everyone explains the EU's AI transparency rules. This is the only guide that compiles.

Pre-order early bird — €29 ~~€89 at launch~~ · ships September · PDF + EPUB + repo + templates

—days until it applies

The regulation

"Providers of AI systems […] generating synthetic audio, image, video or text content, shall ensure that the outputs of the AI system are marked in a machine-readable format and detectable as artificially generated or manipulated."

Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 50(2) · fines up to €15M or 3% of global turnover

The implementation — real output, verified July 2026

$ node verify.js signed.jpg
claim_generator: pixelsmith/1.0.0 c2pa-rs/0.49.2
action: c2pa.created
digitalSourceType: …/trainedAlgorithmicMedia
signed_at: 2026-07-24T17:14:58+00:00
validation_status: []  # clean ✓

Left: what the law demands. Right: this book's own test suite satisfying it. Every snippet in the book ran before it was printed.

Twelve chapters. Four duties. Zero legalese without translation.

Written for the developer who got the "can you handle this?" email. Each chapter: the law in one page → a decision tree → working code → edge cases → the evidence that proves compliance.

Part 0 · Orientation

1 · The 30-Minute Triage — your obligation matrix
2 · Reading the Guidelines Like an Engineer

Part I · Art. 50(1) — chatbots

3 · Chatbot & Agent Disclosure — code + dark-pattern traps

Part III–IV · Art. 50(3)–(4)

9 · Emotion Recognition & Biometrics
10 · Deepfakes & Public-Interest Text

Part II · Art. 50(2) — the technical heart

4 · Marking Strategy — hard + soft binding
5 · C2PA Content Credentials in Practice
6 · Watermarking Audio, Image, Video
7 · The Text Problem — the honest chapter
8 · Pipelines, Legacy & the Provider Chain

Part V · Proving it

11 · The Evidence File
12 · Ship Checklist & the 30-Day Sprint

What you get

The book — ~140 pages, PDF + EPUB, DRM-free
Companion repo — every example runnable, incl. the CI verification suite and a local RFC 3161 timestamp server for air-gapped builds
Obligation-matrix & evidence-file templates
Free updates for 12 months — the standards will move; the book moves with them
Early-bird extra: your product's obligation matrix reviewed by the author (first 30 pre-orders)

Early bird · pre-order

€29 ~~€89~~

Ships September 2026. Price rises to €89 (bundle) / €39 (ebook only) at launch.

Pre-order for €29

Payments handled by Polar (merchant of record — VAT sorted, invoice included). Not happy at delivery? Full refund, keep the templates.

Written for

Developers & tech leads shipping chatbots or generative features to EU users
CTOs and founders with no legal budget and an August deadline
Agencies putting AI-generated content into the world for clients
The compliance officer who needs a spec engineering will actually read

Not written for

Lawyers looking for doctrinal analysis
Enterprises shopping for governance platforms
Anyone hoping compliance is a PDF you buy and never open

Already earning its cover price in testing

Writing code before printing it finds the things blog posts miss. Two examples from the book's own test runs:

gotcha #1 · the mandatory optional field

The C2PA Node SDK's tsaUrl reads as optional. Omit it and signing dies with failed to downcast any to string. The book documents it — and ships a local timestamp server so your CI never depends on someone else's uptime.

gotcha #2 · one screenshot kills the manifest

A single quality-90 re-encode strips a signed Content Credential completely — verified, output printed in Chapter 5. Which is exactly why the book builds the layered marking the law's "robust" actually requires.

Questions you were about to ask

Does the August 2 deadline really apply? I read the AI Act was delayed.

The high-risk regime was delayed (to December 2027 / August 2028). Article 50's transparency duties were not — they apply 2 August 2026, with one narrow grace period: machine-readable marking for generative systems already on the market before that date gets until 2 December 2026. Chapter 1 sorts your exact exposure in 30 minutes.

Which duties apply to my product?

Four possible: AI-interaction disclosure (chatbots), machine-readable marking of generated media/text, emotion-recognition/biometric disclosure, and deepfake/public-interest-text labeling. Provider vs deployer matters. The free triage excerpt answers it — subscribe below and it lands in your inbox.

Is this legal advice?

No — it's an implementation guide written by an engineer, mapped to the Act, the Commission's final July 2026 Guidelines, and the Code of Practice, with sources cited at article level. It makes you dangerous in meetings, not admissible in court. For bet-the-company calls, pair it with counsel.

What if the standards change after I buy?

They will — watermarking is a moving target. Every buyer gets 12 months of free updates and a versioned repo. The book is maintained like software, because it is one.

When exactly does it ship, and what if it doesn't?

September 2026. Chapters 1 and 5 are already written (excerpts on the Substack). If it slips or disappoints, full refund, no forms, keep the templates.