The EU AI Act Article 50 marking and detection obligations apply from 2 August 2026, with separate disclosure duties for deepfakes and certain public-interest text. China’s explicit and implicit AI-content labelling measures have applied since 1 September 2025. The United States still lacks one equivalent general federal watermark mandate; provenance bills remain proposals unless enacted.
The strongest reading of the current sources
EU Regulation 2024/1689 requires providers of systems generating synthetic audio, image, video, or text to mark outputs in a machine-readable and detectable way where technically feasible. The European Commission’s final voluntary Code of Practice offers a compliance path but does not replace the binding Article 50 duties. China’s four-agency measures require visible and implicit labels, including file-metadata marking, and prohibit malicious removal, alteration, forgery, or concealment. In the US, the 2025 COPIED Act text proposes standards, provenance capabilities, and protections, but a bill is not law merely because it was introduced. China’s rules took effect on 1 September 2025; the EU Article 50 date was 2 August 2026.
A legal disclosure can be visible, machine-readable, or both. Technical metadata removal is not the same as legal permission to remove a required label. Obligations depend on jurisdiction, role, content type, use, and exceptions; this research brief is general information, not legal advice.
See the source behind the answer
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Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 50
Article 50 requires technically feasible machine-readable marking and detectability for synthetic audio, image, video, and text outputs, plus specified deployer disclosures for deepfakes and public-interest text.
Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-generated Content
The Commission confirms that Article 50 transparency duties apply from 2 August 2026 and describes the final voluntary code as an adequate compliance tool for signatories.
Measures for Labelling Artificial Intelligence-Generated and Synthesized Content
China’s four-agency measures require explicit and implicit labels, including file-metadata markers, and prohibit malicious deletion, alteration, forgery, concealment, or tooling that enables those acts.
S.1396 — Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act of 2025
The introduced COPIED Act text proposes NIST provenance standards, creator access to content-provenance capabilities, and protections against unauthorized removal, but the cited text is a legislative proposal rather than an enacted general federal mandate.
What remains uncertain
- Application can turn on detailed definitions, exceptions, territorial reach, implementation guidance, and whether a system merely assists editing or substantially changes content.
- US federal and state proposals can change status, and sector-specific, election, impersonation, consumer-protection, and platform rules may apply even without a single general watermark statute.
- Technical standards and provider implementations evolve faster than legislation; compliance may require more than finding or adding one metadata tag.
What to do before you share
- 01
Keep original files and provenance records when a disclosure or audit trail may be legally required.
- 02
Do not use metadata cleaning to evade a required AI label, provenance marker, platform rule, evidence hold, or contractual obligation.
- 03
For EU-facing generated content, map provider marking duties and deployer disclosure duties separately; they apply to different actors and outputs.
- 04
Get jurisdiction-specific legal advice before designing a compliance workflow or removing markers from regulated content.
Quick clarifications
Does the EU AI Act require watermarks on AI text?
Article 50(2) covers synthetic text as well as audio, images, and video, requiring machine-readable marking and detectability where technically feasible. Article 50(4) separately addresses disclosure for AI-generated or manipulated text published to inform the public on matters of public interest, subject to its conditions and exceptions.
Is it illegal to remove an AI watermark?
There is no universal answer. China’s cited measures prohibit malicious removal or concealment of required labels. Other jurisdictions and contexts differ, and contracts, platform rules, evidence duties, copyright-related provenance protections, or anti-deception law may also matter. Obtain legal advice for the specific use.
Is the EU Code of Practice itself mandatory?
The Code is voluntary, but the underlying Article 50 transparency requirements are legal obligations. The Commission describes adherence as a way for signatories to demonstrate compliance.