What publishers need to know before 2 August 2026.
Google is down-ranking AI articles. Readers scroll past them. Regulators are about to require a label on them.
Plain-English field notes on AI content, SEO, and the regulation most publishers will notice too late. No legal jargon. No scare tactics. Just what the regulation says and what it means for your operation.
August 2, 2026: The deadline the content industry does not know it has.
The EU AI Act's transparency obligation for AI-generated text has not been delayed. It takes effect in less than four months. If you publish AI-generated content on topics of public interest, you face a binary choice: label it or document a human review.
AI disclosure kills engagement. The data is not ambiguous.
62% of readers disengage when they know content is AI-generated. Trust erodes across every metric. The label is not free. It is a cost that compounds on every article, every month, for every reader.
You can build Article 50(4) compliance in-house. Here is what that actually looks like.
The regulation does not require a third-party service. We will tell you exactly how to do it yourself. Then we will tell you why most publishers decide not to.