AI agents must disclose both their AI nature and on whose behalf they act

Point (31) of the guidelines of 20 July 2026 states that AI agents are covered by Article 50(1) if they are capable of interacting with the persons instructing them or with other natural persons in the execution of their tasks, citing as examples making bookings, managing correspondence, negotiating or concluding contracts and executing purchases. That same point requires AI agents to be designed and developed so that they disclose both their artificial nature and the person on whose behalf they are acting, given the need for transparency of the origin and of the delegation of authority and accountability for the consequences of their actions. This also applies in complex multi-agent architectures in which other agents interact directly with natural persons. Where the provider cannot reliably determine before placing on the market or putting into service whether the agent will directly interact with a natural person, the agent should be designed at the architecture level and instructed to disclose itself in every situation where it is reasonably likely to interact with a natural person, including where that person represents a legal entity. Agents should also disclose themselves to the persons instructing them at key steps such as authorisation, reporting and validation, including where the agent receives, processes or relies upon outputs generated by other AI systems rather than by a natural person, and at every new interaction. Point (63) adds that Article 50(2) may apply to AI agents where the agent takes an action whose output is AI-generated or manipulated content perceptible by natural persons, while intermediate processing steps such as reasoning and chain of thought and non-perceptible actions such as a web request or browser action fall outside that scope.

• Locator: Commission Guidelines C(2026) 5054 final, Section 3.1.1 point (31) and Section 4.1.2 point (63)praxikon:eu:ai-act:source:commission-article-50-guidelinesOpen official source

Here the guidelines go further than most organisations expect. The obligation is twofold: not only 'I am AI', but also 'I act on behalf of this party'. That turns agentic email, procurement and negotiation into a design question rather than a line in a footer. Two things are systematically missed. First, the disclosure duty also runs towards your own instructing party, at key steps such as authorisation and validation, and particularly where the agent builds on outputs from other AI systems rather than on human input. Second, the provider's uncertainty resolves nothing: if the provider cannot determine in advance whether the agent will reach a human, the answer is not 'then it does not apply' but 'then you build the disclosure into the architecture by default'. An agent that stays quiet until it is certain a human is reading is not what is intended.

• Locator: Commission Guidelines C(2026) 5054 final, Section 3.1.1 point (31) and Section 4.1.2 point (63)praxikon:eu:ai-act:source:commission-article-50-guidelinesOpen official source

Treat your agent's disclosure as an architecture requirement, not a prompt instruction that can be overridden per task. Ensure every outbound channel of the agent, meaning email, chat, telephony and forms, carries both the AI origin and the instructing organisation by default. Also build confirmation moments towards your own user at authorisation, reporting and validation, and flag explicitly there when the agent is building on output from another AI system. Finally, mark the perceptible content the agent produces in line with Article 50(2), but not the internal reasoning steps.

• Locator: Commission Guidelines C(2026) 5054 final, Section 3.1.1 point (31) and Section 4.1.2 point (63)praxikon:eu:ai-act:source:commission-article-50-guidelinesOpen official source