Labeling Ai-generated Content: Privacy Trade‑offs and Market Effects of Article 50 EU AI Act

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The rapid spread of generative artificial intelligence systems is radically transforming synthetic media markets, heightening risks to digital privacy, the authenticity of information, and user trust in online content. In response, the EU has introduced the Artificial Intelligence Act, a central element of which for synthetic media is the requirements of Article 50 regarding the labeling of generated and modified content. The aim of this article is to conceptually analyze how these requirements impact the protection of digital privacy, information integrity, and the operating conditions of synthetic media markets, as well as to identify key regulatory dilemmas and gaps.The study is based on a targeted narrative review of legal, economic, and technical literature, supplemented by an analysis of the text of the AI Act, GDPR, DSA, Data Act, and related EU acts. Key findings include a reconstruction of the framework of Article 50 obligations for providers and deployers of AI systems, a description of the types of regulatory interaction between Article 50 and other digital regulatory regimes, identification of structural dilemmas between the goals of mandatory AI labeling, privacy protection, and regulatory proportionality, identification of key gaps, including the absence of preventive control over training datasets and the uncertainty of technical labeling standards.Key findings indicate that the requirements of Article 50 have the potential to strengthen digital privacy protection and trust in synthetic content only if combined with stricter regulation of data collection, alignment with the principle of data minimization, and clearer coordination with online content moderation regimes. At the same time, the current configuration of the rules creates significant compliance costs and barriers to entry for small providers without guarantees of a corresponding improvement in the situation for users, which calls for further regulatory clarifications and empirical research.