The Law Doesn't Count the Words

For years I have said the same thing. You own every line. Responsibility cannot be delegated to the tool, however much the tool did. People have nodded, people have grumbled, some have thought I was making it harder than it needs to be. Now the law says the same thing.

What the AI Act actually requires

The EU AI Act has an article on transparency, in force since the second of August. It says that AI-generated text published to inform the public on matters of public interest is to be marked as AI-generated. At first that sounds like a problem for anyone who lets a model write for them. Should every post be stamped "made by AI"?

But read on

There is an exception, and it is the whole point. You do not have to label the text if two things hold. A human has genuinely reviewed it. And a natural or legal person bears editorial responsibility for publishing it.

Read that again. The law does not ask what share of the words the model wrote. It does not care whether it is ten percent or ninety. It asks one thing: has a human checked the content, and is there someone who answers for it.

Accountability, not authorship

It is the same line I have drawn all along, now with legal text behind it. What matters is not who wrote it, but who owns it. A text where I have read every line, checked it against sources, corrected what was wrong and put my name to it is mine. Not because I hid that AI was involved. Because I did not hand off the responsibility.

It is the same argument as one from a time long before today's models: a computer cannot be held accountable, so a human must. The share that was machine-written changes nothing in that equation. A text that is ninety percent AI-generated and reviewed by an accountable human is more in order than one that is ten percent AI-generated and that nobody read.

What it means in practice

For me it changes nothing, because I already worked this way. AI drafts, I validate, I own. That is why I do not mark my texts as AI-generated, and now I know the law lets me not to. But for anyone who has built a machine that pumps out content with no one reading it, the exception becomes a wall. The text is allowed. But it has to carry an AI stamp, and no one wants to read what is stamped.

The uncomfortable small print

I am not a lawyer, and this is a fresh regulation still being interpreted. Read the text yourself, take advice if it concerns your business. I am not citing the clause as settled fact.

But the principle beneath the clause does not wait for a legal opinion. It was true before the law was written and it is true regardless of how the courts land. Accountability cannot be automated. Someone has to answer for what gets sent.

The law only caught up to something that was always true. It does not matter how many words the machine wrote. It matters who answers for them.

See also: A Computer Can Never Be Held Accountable (series 49) and I Am Smarter Than AI (series 1).