EU AI Act Content Labelling: Fake Around and Find Out

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In this week's Thursday Thinkpiece we take a look at the recent EU AI Act and how it's changing the way the internet and businesses market themselves in this ever changing climate.

There’s a place where creativity meets corporate interests. A place where selling a product or vertical slice of yourself is the goal.The place I speak of is a little place we call Social Media.

On Social Media, you can be anything you want to be. You can turn yourself into an expert on any topic or industry. This is a place where you can run a whole business on vibes and journeys. A place where realism isn’t the name of the game but where a curated version of yourself can exist separate to you. You can deflect criticism quite easily but this is usually by just ignoring the “haters” who are just jealous of you of course. Money isn’t always the goal but AI has helped to turn everyone into a writer, artist or music megastar with nothing but a pocket full of dreams and a prompt full of hope.

I can say I’ve leant on using Gen-AI to help me structure my thoughts and even to try and make something fit a more rigid structure. It’s not because I can’t write, it's more because it’s a skill I haven’t been able to practice properly for a while. It failed because that probably didn’t help to really bring forward what I was trying to achieve. It doesn’t know me, it just “knows” what I think I should be. It’s kind of the main reason why these think pieces even exist.

As someone who loves to write, edit video, draw and play music in an analogue and sometimes digital fashion. I don’t want to take away anyone’s ability to express themselves. I can love Bob Dylan before he went electric and after. It doesn’t mean I’m amazing at any of these things but whatever I put on the page comes from my unique lens of the world. I then sprinkled in some inspiration from what has gone before. That’s it. However, the future of Gen AI trying to replace human ingenuity isn’t something far away on the horizon of civilization anymore.

It’s here. But I digress. In its most basic form, Gen-AI. Well it’s just a tool.

On Sunday August 2nd 2026, The EU AI Act started officially applying but it actually came into force on August 1st 2024 for those taking notes. It shifted what was thought to be a dream for those who didn’t necessarily fit the archetype of the tortured artist. To try and larp like one even if deep down they truly are. It’s a shortcut which now comes with up to a 15 million Euro price tag for those who don’t disclose it clearly, or 3% worldwide annual turnover whichever hurts them more. This is where FAFO stops being a bit of internet vulgarity and starts meaning Fake Around And Find Out.

15 million euros could be thought of as a rounding error to a big tech company like Meta. 3% of global turnover well that’s gonna sting Zuckerburg and co more than the loss made from the Metaverse.

What is Generative AI?

Generative AI is the synthetic output of large language models that have been trained on almost the whole of human histories’ art, music and literature to produce something which can only be described as an uncanny valley of humanity. This output can be in illustrated flyers for businesses, funny video shorts featuring animated pieces of fruit cheating on each other on YouTube and TikTok or as banal as social media posts on LinkedIn and X.

It ticks all the boxes of what went before it and in many cases is probably the best way of doing things for efficiency and speed for individuals or small teams. The application of this technology is seemingly infinite and is not going away any time soon.

What began as a way to save some time writing an email has now become the way to fully write, voice and produce a song with near studio level production. I’m not here to say it’s bad or that people should be penalised for using it as that is very Pre-ChatGPT thinking. The bottle this genie lives in was smashed to pieces many years ago. It’s not going back in. The wishes however now come with a bit of a catch.

What is the EU AI Act?

The EU AI Act first hit the headlines in 2023 (which I’ll come back to shortly) it seemed broad and a bit of a nothing burger way back when. This is how all legislation is initially drafted.

Back in November 2022, when many of us early adopters signed up to the free OpenAI Playground I played around with it in its most basic form before ChatGPT Plus became a thing. Plenty of “at capacity” messages which I’m sure a lot of you remember and it was very basic and fiddly to set up. It was pay as you go and I was very careful in staying within very small limits.

Then in February 2023 when ChatGPT Plus launched I was lucky to already have an account and credit card attached so I just bit the bullet to have the subscription to have a play around and get around the self imposed and technical limits. It was fun. Honestly, I mainly...