Do you need to tell customers that you use AI in your business?
- 12 October 2026
- 1 min
- Rules and laws
- Managing and growing
- KVK Editors
Do you use AI tools in your business or organisation? And do your customers come into contact with them, for example through your customer service? New European rules apply since August 2026. Customers must know when they are interacting with AI. Read about the situations in which you must disclose your use of AI and how to do this.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell whether something has been created using AI. For that reason, as of 2 August 2026, you are subject to transparency obligations in certain situations. In those cases, you must inform people that you are using AI. The rules on AI are set out in a European law: the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI .
Situations in which you must disclose your use of AI
The obligation applies when customers or other users come into contact with AI within your business or organisation. For example, if you use AI for:
Customer service
You use a chatbot or AI-powered telephone assistant to communicate with people, for example for customer service. In that case, you must inform customers during the first interaction that they are speaking to an AI assistant.
Creating deepfakes
You create or edit a deepfake. For example, an AI-generated video may appear to show an employee of your company advising a customer, even though that employee never had that conversation. You must clearly indicate, either visually or audibly, that the deepfake was created using AI.
These rules also apply if you share deepfakes created by others. For example, if you post such a deepfake on social media.
Writing texts
You use an AI tool to write texts without having them reviewed afterwards by a human. For example, an estate agent uses an AI tool to write a property listing and publishes it online without checking whether the information is entirely accurate. Do you use AI in this way? Then you must state that the text was generated by AI and has not been reviewed by a human.
Exceptions
The transparency obligations do not apply to printed materials such as leaflets and brochures. Nor do you need to disclose it, for example, if you use AI to help code your website or app.
More information
The European Commission's Code of and Frequently Asked provide more information about the transparency obligations. In the Netherlands, various supervisory authorities monitor whether businesses and organisations comply with the rules, including the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, AP). Failure to comply with the law may result in a fine.
