EU AI Act
The EU AI Act's requirement to tell customers they're talking to an AI, whose responsibility it is, and how to implement the disclosure on every Octocom channel.
Since August 2, 2026, the EU AI Act's transparency obligations (Article 50) apply: people interacting with an AI system must be informed that they are, unless it's already obvious from the context. For a customer-service bot, that means telling the customer they're talking to an AI.
The Act reaches beyond EU-based companies — what matters is whether the people interacting with the system are in the EU. A US brand selling to European shoppers can be in scope; an EU brand serving only American customers may not be.
The usual caveat: we are not your lawyers, and whether the Act applies to you depends on where you operate and who you serve. This page describes the obligation as generally understood and the tooling we provide.
Whose responsibility is the disclosure?
Yours, as the business deploying the bot — and by design.
Octocom can't reliably determine which of your customers the Act covers: we don't know your jurisdictions, your markets, or your risk posture, and getting this wrong in either direction has a cost. What we do is expose the tools to implement the disclosure cleanly on every channel, so that complying is a configuration decision you make once, per channel, per market.
How to disclose, per channel
| Channel | Recommended mechanism |
|---|---|
| Web chat | State it in the widget's intro message ("You're chatting with our AI assistant…"). A disclaimer element in the widget is also available. |
| Add it to the bot's email signature in your email channel configuration — every bot reply then carries the disclosure automatically. | |
| Voice | Configure the initial pickup message to announce the AI assistant before the conversation starts. |
| Instagram, Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp | These channels have no intro-message or signature concept, so add a channel-specific bot rule instructing the bot to introduce itself as an AI assistant in its first message of each conversation. |
| Contact forms | Include a country field in the form and add a bot rule that has the bot introduce itself as an AI when the submission indicates an EU customer — the customer self-declares their market, so no detection is needed. |
In every case, keep the disclosure in the first touch of the conversation — that's what the Act's "informed" standard expects, and it also reads more honestly to customers than a disclosure buried mid-conversation.
One distinction worth knowing when choosing a mechanism: intro messages, email signatures, and pickup messages are deterministic — the disclosure appears every time, mechanically. Bot rules are instructions the AI follows, which is reliable but not mechanical. A deterministic setup is always available on any channel by routing: send the relevant market to a separate email inbox, widget configuration, or a fully separate bot for that region, with the disclosure baked in. Where a guaranteed disclosure matters to your legal team, prefer those; use rules where the channel offers nothing else or where a conditional, market-dependent disclosure is the goal.
Serving both EU and non-EU customers
If you only want the disclosure where it's required, split by market:
- Web chat — run multiple widget configurations, one with the disclosure and one without, and route by domain or path (e.g. your
.destorefront vs. your.comone). - Email — use separate inboxes for EU and non-EU markets, each with its own bot signature.
- Other channels — scope the disclosure bot rule to the specific channels or businesses serving EU customers.
How far you take the split is up to you — from a single disclosure everywhere, to per-market routing, to a fully separate bot per region. All of these configurations are supported.
If you don't serve EU customers
Then the AI Act doesn't require a disclosure, and whether to identify the bot as an AI is entirely your call. Merchants weigh this differently: some disclose everywhere as a matter of brand honesty; others find conversations run more naturally without it. Both are supported — every mechanism above is opt-in, and the bot follows whatever persona and disclosure posture you configure.
If your legal team wants the conservative posture, disclosing everywhere is the simplest configuration: one intro message, one signature, one rule, no routing.