AI Vocabulary · 08 Rules & Responsibility
What is Transparency?
Being open that AI is involved, what it does and where its limits are.
Transparency in AI has several layers. Towards users: people should know when they are talking to a chatbot rather than a person, and when content was generated or manipulated by AI, especially realistic images, audio or video. Towards those affected: people should be able to understand how an AI-supported decision about them came about. And towards you as a buyer: providers should explain what a system does, what data it was built on and where it fails.
The EU AI Act turns parts of this into obligations, for example disclosing AI interactions and labelling deepfakes, with stricter documentation duties for high-risk AI.
Why it matters for you
Trust is fragile. Customers who find out later that they were talking to a bot, or that a text or image was AI-made without saying so, feel deceived. Being upfront costs little.
Own it
Make transparency a habit: say where you use AI, what a person checks, and how people can reach a human. It is a competitive advantage, not just a compliance task.
Where it comes from
Transparency was one of the seven requirements in the EU's 2019 Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, covering traceability, explainability and open communication about AI. The EU AI Act turned parts of it into law, for example the Article 50 duties to tell people when they interact with an AI system and to label certain generated content.
Related
Your AI Learning Hub
Learn the whole AI Vocabulary, step by step, and build with it. Build it. Own it.