AI disclosure requirements in Austria: what applies from 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 — which is what this page covers for Austria.

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