The EU AI Act Newsletter #109: The Watermarking Era

Heading Legislative Process 4th GPI Signatory Task Force Meeting The European Commission's AI Office reports on the Task Force's July 17, 2026 session, which covered the safety and security and copyright chapters of the GPI Code of Practice.

On the former, the Office explained how analyzing model usage can form part of post-market monitoring under Measure 3.5, since information about how a model is used and its behavior during usage complements pre-deployment evaluations and informs several stages of systemic risk assessment.

Participants also discussed marginal risk clauses, which indicate that, should competitors begin pushing the frontiers of capabilities by deploying unsafe models, a provider could consider doing likewise.

The office highlighted that such clauses could be invoked only in exceptional circumstances and under appropriate evidentiary and procedural safeguards.

Turning to copyright, measure 1.3 for commit signatories to publishing information that enables affected rights holders to learn which web crawlers are used and their robots, TXT features, and to notifying them automatically of updates.

How are AI agents addressed within the AI Act? The Commission's AI Act Service Desk sets out, in an FAQ, how the Act applies to AI agents.

It acknowledges that the term is often used inconsistently in public debate and is not clearly defined, while noting broad agreement that an agent must be able to receive and process input from its environment and execute actions based on this processing.

On that basis, the Service Desk explains that agents are not a separate category under the Act, but that the definitions of an AI system in Article 3 and of a general-purpose AI model in Article 3 are sufficient to cover them.

Consequently, the prohibitions on harmful manipulation and exploitation of vulnerabilities may require safeguards at the design and development stage.

The transparency rules apply from August 2, 2026, where an agent is intended to interact with natural persons or generate content.

Furthermore, the high-risk requirements follow in December 2027 or August 2028, where it is classified as high-risk.

Autonomy and tool use may also be decisive in the designation of the model as a model with systemic risk.