Does a per-call record limit my liability?

No. Strict liability under the Directive does not turn on how carefully you documented things. What a record changes is the evidential position: Article 10(2) allows defectiveness to be presumed where a defendant does not produce evidence a court has ordered it to disclose, and a contemporaneous account of the output the gate released is the kind of evidence that question is about.

I only resell. Am I really in the manufacturer's position?

If your own name, trade mark or other distinguishing feature is on the product, Article 8(1) treats you as its manufacturer. Reselling under the supplier's brand is a different position from reselling under yours, which is one reason the branding decision is worth making deliberately before December.

It is a directive. Does it apply the same everywhere?

No. A directive is transposed into national law, so the operative text is the national one and the details can differ per Member State. The date to have transposed by is 9 December 2026, under Article 22.

Ahead · 9 December 2026

Product liability: what 9 December 2026 changes if your name is on the AI.

For products placed on the market after 8 December 2026

Last reviewed: 6 October 2026

The revised Product Liability Directive (EU) 2024/2853 applies to products placed on the market or put into service after 8 December 2026 (Directive (EU) 2024/2853, Art. 2(1), as corrected by the corrigendum in OJ L, 2026/90364 of 7 May 2026); deployments already on the market are not caught by it. Two changes matter for anyone reselling AI. Software, AI systems included, is a product. And anyone who puts their own name, trade mark or other distinguishing feature on a product is treated as its manufacturer. That is the ordinary position of a white-label agency. It is a directive, so the text you will be measured against is the national transposition.

What the law requires

Member States must have transposed the revised Directive by 9 December 2026.: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, Art. 22
The Directive applies to products placed on the market or put into service after 8 December 2026.: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, Art. 2(1), as corrected by the corrigendum in OJ L, 2026/90364 of 7 May 2026
Software, including AI systems, is a product for the purposes of the liability regime.: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, Art. 4(1)
Anyone who puts their own name, trade mark or other distinguishing feature on a product is treated as its manufacturer.: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, Art. 8(1)
Liability is strict. The claimant proves the defectiveness, the damage and the causal link between them — not that anyone was careless.: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, Art. 10(1)
Defectiveness may be presumed where the defendant fails to disclose relevant evidence that a court has ordered it to disclose.: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, Art. 9(1) and Art. 10(2)
Compensable damage covers death and personal injury including medically recognised harm to psychological health, damage to property, and destruction or corruption of data not used exclusively for professional purposes.: Directive (EU) 2024/2853, Art. 6(1)

What Audact does about it

A receipt is visible in the product for governed calls, recording a hash of the output the gate released (on a block, the fallback reply the caller receives), what it refused, and where the disclosure sat in the conversation.: Working today
Scope limits enforced while the call runs, so the agent refuses what it is not allowed to say instead of improvising it.: In controlled testing
Three fields on every receipt that anyone can recompute without a key: the input hash, the output hash and the link to the receipt before it. Merkle inclusion is the fourth, and it is checked against the published root with the inclusion proof from the call's Article 50 report.: Visible in product · Merkle roots published
Export of a chain as a dated file you can hand to a client, an insurer or counsel. An export returns the receipts that match the period and jurisdiction you request. It does not establish that every call in that period produced a receipt.: Working today

Why this date is an agency date

White-label is not a commercial arrangement here. It is a legal position.

The mechanism is simple and it is old: put your name on someone else's product and the law treats you as its maker. What the revised Directive adds is that software and AI systems are now products, so the mechanism reaches an agency that resells a voice agent under its own brand. You did not build the model, and that does not change the position.

It bites hardest where a defective interaction can plausibly contribute to personal harm: dental and healthcare triage, medication reminders, pre-treatment instructions. In verticals without that exposure the same logic applies to property damage and to destroyed or corrupted data, but the sums are usually different.

What a receipt is

Contemporaneous evidence of a call. And that is a specific thing.

Three fields on every receipt can be recomputed by anyone today: the hash of the input, the hash of the output and the link to the receipt before it. Merkle inclusion is the fourth, and it is checked against the published root with the inclusion proof from the call's Article 50 report. No key and no account are needed for the three, and together they make a later change or reordering detectable. Alongside them the receipt carries an authentication code (HMAC-SHA256, a symmetric key held by Audact), which is what binds the record to the tenant that produced it.

What that gives you is a contemporaneous account of a specific conversation: a hash of the output the gate released, what was refused, when. It is not the technical documentation of a product, it does not limit or cap liability, and it guarantees no outcome. It is a record to stand behind, produced while the call ran rather than reconstructed after a claim.

This page is general information and not legal advice. How the Directive applies to you depends on your role, your contracts and the national transposition. Talk to your own counsel about that.

Questions

Does a per-call record limit my liability?: No. Strict liability under the Directive does not turn on how carefully you documented things. What a record changes is the evidential position: Article 10(2) allows defectiveness to be presumed where a defendant does not produce evidence a court has ordered it to disclose, and a contemporaneous account of the output the gate released is the kind of evidence that question is about.
I only resell. Am I really in the manufacturer's position?: If your own name, trade mark or other distinguishing feature is on the product, Article 8(1) treats you as its manufacturer. Reselling under the supplier's brand is a different position from reselling under yours, which is one reason the branding decision is worth making deliberately before December.
It is a directive. Does it apply the same everywhere?: No. A directive is transposed into national law, so the operative text is the national one and the details can differ per Member State. The date to have transposed by is 9 December 2026, under Article 22.

The proof exists before you need it

A record made during the call is worth more than a reconstruction made after a claim. See what a receipt contains and what a third party can recompute from it.

See a receipt

White-label
The commercial side of the same decision.
Dental
Where personal-injury exposure is closest.
Healthcare
The same question, wider scope.
Article 50, 2 August 2026
The duty that already applies.
All dates
The full calendar.