eu-act-check

CLI compliance scanner for EU AI Act Article 50 — scans files for C2PA manifests, EXIF metadata, and AI disclosure text patterns.

eu-act-check 🔍

EU AI Act Article 50 compliance scanner — Scan files for C2PA provenance manifests, EXIF/XMP AI generation metadata, and synthetic text markers. Identify compliance gaps before regulators do.

The Problem

August 2, 2026 — the EU AI Act’s transparency requirements under Article 50 take full effect. Any AI-generated or deepfake content distributed in the EU must carry:

  • C2PA provenance manifests (Content Credentials) embedded in the file
  • Metadata declarations identifying the AI tool used to create it
  • Disclosure statements for AI-generated text

Failure is not optional — penalties can reach 3% of global annual turnover or €15 million.

eu-act-check scans your file tree now and tells you exactly what’s missing and how to fix it, so August 2 doesn’t catch you off guard.

Quickstart

pip install eu-act-check

# Scan a directory (recursive)
eu-act-check scan ./content/ --recursive

# Quick CI check — exit 0 (pass) or 1 (warn/fail)
eu-act-check check ./blog-post.md

# Deep dive into one file
eu-act-check inspect ./hero-image.jpg

CLI Reference

scan — Scan files or directories

eu-act-check scan <target> [--recursive] [--format table|json] [--remediate]
Argument Description
target File or directory to scan (required)
--recursive, -r Scan directories recursively
--format, -f Output format: table (default) or json
--remediate Show remediation instructions for failing files

inspect — Deep dive on one file

eu-act-check inspect <file>

Shows every detector’s findings for a single file with full detail and remediation.

check — CI mode

eu-act-check check <file>

Returns exit code 0 (pass) or 1 (warn/fail). Designed for CI pipeline gates.

Detection Layers

Layer What It Checks File Types Standard
C2PA Embedded provenance manifests JPEG, PNG, WebP, MP4, audio, PDF C2PA ISO / Content Credentials
EXIF/XMP/IPTC AI generation tool signatures JPEG, PNG, WebP XMP.xmp.GenerateTool, IPTC.DigitalSourceType
Text patterns AI disclosure markers, watermark comments .md, .txt, .html, .json, .yaml, .xml, .csv 18 regex patterns

Architecture

╭──────────────╮     ╭──────────────╮     ╭────────────────╮
│              │     │              │     │                │
│  cli.py      │────>│  scanner.py  │────>│  compliance.py │
│  (Typer)     │     │  (pathspec)  │     │  (aggregator)  │
│              │     │              │     │                │
╰──────────────╯     ╰──────────────╯     ╰───────┬────────╯
                                                   │
            ┌──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┐
            │              ╭──────────╮           │          ╭──────────╮│
            │              │ c2pa.py  │           │          │ table.py ││
            │              ├──────────┤           │          ├──────────┤│
            │              │ exif.py  │           │          │ json_rep ││
            │              ├──────────┤           │          ╰──────────╯│
            │              │text_patt │           │                     │
            │              ╰──────────╯           │                     │
            │           detectors/                │       reporters/    │
            └─────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────┘

Use Cases

📋 Pre-deployment audit

eu-act-check scan ./assets/ --recursive --remediate > compliance-report.txt

🔄 CI/CD gate

# .github/workflows/eu-compliance.yml
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v4
  - run: pip install eu-act-check
  - run: eu-act-check check ./dist/ --recursive

Development

git clone https://github.com/vikasudasi/eu-act-check.git
cd eu-act-check
pip install -e ".[dev]"

make lint       # Ruff linting
make typecheck  # mypy type checking
make test       # 87 tests, 85% coverage

Resources