Transparency requirements when working with AI
Do you use AI systems for your business? As a provider or deployer of certain AI systems, you have a transparency obligation. You must, for example, label your AI-generated content for your readers, users, or customers.
When do I have a transparency obligation?
Whether you have a transparency obligation depends on how you use the AI system. You must disclose that you are using an AI system if you use it to:
- interact with users, such as a chatbot or telephone receptionist
- create or modify (manipulate) content, such as images, text, or audio
- recognise people's emotions or categorise them based their on biometric characteristics for medical or safety reasons
- create deepfakes, also when used for artistic or satirical purposes
- generate texts on matters of public interest without editorial (human) control
If it is sufficiently clear to users of your system that it is an AI system, or a system that uses AI, you do not have transparency obligations.
How do I comply with the transparency obligation?
How you meet the transparency obligation depends on the type of AI-system you use:
- A system that interacts with people, such as a chatbot, must actively state that it is an AI system.
- A system that creates artificial content must clearly mark the generated content, with a machine-readable watermark and label.
- If you use an AI-system for emotion recognition or for biometric classification, you must inform the individuals whose data the system processes.
- If you deploy a system to generate or edit deepfakes, you must visibly or audibly state that AI was used to create your content.
Please note: from 2 December 2026, existing AI-systems must also mark their generated content with a machine readable watermark.
Supervision of the transparency obligation
The Department for the Coordination of Algorithmic Oversight (DCA) of the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, AP) supervises the use of AI systems in the Netherlands.