AI disclosure requirements in Austria: what applies since 2 August 2026
The EU AI Act's transparency obligations are a Union-wide regulation, so the substance is the same in Austria as everywhere in the EU: from 2 August 2026, AI systems that interact with people must disclose they're AI, synthetic media must carry machine-readable marking, and deepfakes and certain AI-generated public-interest text must be labeled. What differs country by country is who enforces it, in what language your users encounter it, and how quickly complaints turn into questions.
Enforcement in Austria
Austria had not publicly designated its national competent authorities at the time of review, it missed the Act's 2 August 2025 designation deadline. The government's KI-Maßnahmenpaket sets out a two-step approach: the existing KI-Servicestelle (AI service centre, housed at the telecoms regulator RTR) acts as the advisory first stop and is being built up toward a fully empowered national AI authority with market surveillance, conformity assessment and certification duties. Until that designation lands the supervisory map is provisional; Article 50 itself applies from 2 August 2026 with the EU penalty ceiling of €15M or 3% of worldwide turnover.
The four duties, as they show up on your site
- Article 50(1): chatbot disclosure
- Any AI system interacting with visitors must make that clear no later than the first interaction, in a clear and distinguishable way.A line in your terms doesn't satisfy it.
- Article 50(2): machine-readable marking
- AI-generated audio, images, video, and text must be marked in a machine-readable, detectable format.For generative systems already on the market before 2 Aug 2026, this specific duty has a transition until 2 Dec 2026; the rest does not.
- Article 50(3): emotion recognition & biometric categorisation
- People exposed must be informed the system is operating.
- Article 50(4): deepfake and AI-text labels
- Visible disclosure for deepfakes, and for AI-generated or manipulated text published to inform the public on matters of public interest.
Austria-specific practicalities
- The KI-Servicestelle at RTR already answers operator questions and publishes guidance, use it as the closest thing to an official Austrian read while formal designation is pending
- RTR's telecoms DNA suggests the eventual supervision will be comfortable with technical checks such as machine-readable marking (50(2))
- Austria's data protection authority (DSB) is competent today wherever the AI feature touches personal data, the complaint route exists before the AI-specific one does
- Keep the German-language first-interaction screenshot in your evidence file, dated, alongside your widget settings export
Disclosure language should match your user-facing language. For a site serving Austria in German, a first-message line such as "Sie chatten mit einem KI-Assistenten" (you're chatting with an AI assistant) is the pattern to aim for, at first interaction, not in the Impressum.
Common questions
Who do we even answer to in Austria right now?
Formal designation was still pending at the time of review. The KI-Servicestelle at RTR is the designated first stop for guidance and is being developed into the national AI authority under the government's two-step plan, and the duties themselves bind from 2 August 2026 under the directly applicable EU regulation either way.
Does the delay in Austria's designation reduce our risk?
Not meaningfully. The obligations apply on schedule, complaints can be routed via data-protection and consumer channels that exist today, and evidence has a long memory: a regulator that stands up in 2027 can still ask what your chatbot disclosed in August 2026. A dated record preserves what the site showed at the time.