Why this suddenly matters

Article 50 of the EU AI Act took effect on 2 August 2026. Providers of generative AI must mark synthetic output so machines can detect it, with penalties up to EUR 15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover.

The markers this tool reads are moving from a voluntary courtesy to a legal obligation, and the share of AI images that declare themselves is climbing fast. Systems already on the market before that date have until 2 December 2026 to comply with the machine-readable marking requirement, and content generated before 2 August 2026 needs no retroactive labelling.

Stripping those markers to pass synthetic media off as real runs against the transparency regime, and against the terms of service of every major model provider. This tool reads markers. It does not remove them.