Source: Agenda Digitale

From 2 August 2026 the transparency obligations of Article 50 of the EU AI Act apply to law firms’ use of chatbots, generative systems and published materials, while Italian advocates remain subject to article 13 of law n.132/2025 regarding information to clients. The European Commission issued guidelines on Article 50 together with a Q&A and a voluntary code of good practices for AI-generated content; the code is voluntary but the regulation’s obligations are binding, and the Commission and the AI Board view the code as an appropriate means to demonstrate compliance, leaving alternative solutions subject to the operator’s burden of proof. Article 50 apportions duties by role: providers (developers/market introducers) must, for systems interacting directly with persons, ensure that the interlocutor is informed from the first interaction; the Commission reads narrow the exception tied to obviousness of interaction.

Providers of systems that generate synthetic content must render outputs machine-readable and detectable as artificial, subject to limited editing exceptions; for systems placed on the market before 2 August the marking obligation starts on 2 December 2026 while other duties begin on 2 August. The regulation distinguishes machine-readable marking from public notices required of deployers under paragraph 4 for deepfakes or AI-generated/manipulated texts about matters of public interest — topics the Commission lists to include politics, administration of justice, fundamental rights, health, environment and economic, financial, scientific or cultural developments. For law firms this primarily affects articles, newsletters, podcasts, videos and other materials addressed to the public, whereas privileged client documents, draft contracts or litigation filings are treated differently and may instead fall principally under article 13 of the Italian law. Article 50 offers an exemption when substantive human editorial review occurs and a person accepts editorial responsibility; the Commission defines such review by subject-matter knowledge, professional judgment, source checks and effective power to approve, modify or reject the text. Article 13 (effective from 10 October 2025) requires professionals to communicate in clear, simple and exhaustive language which activities are assisted by AI, the professional’s control over the system and how client data are processed, with the start of the engagement as the coherent timing for disclosure and updates when functions or data handling change. Practical compliance for law firms therefore requires aligning procurement and contracts, editorial responsibility, public notices and client information to reconcile EU Article 50 duties with the national article 13 obligations, while also attending to GDPR, professional secrecy and any biometric uses.