Chatbots: informing visitors
When visitors talk to a machine, they should be able to know it from the start of the exchange.
AI agent or human chat
A chat window is not necessarily an AI. Many live chats are run by people; others offer an automatic mode, switched on or not. The scan therefore separates AI bot builders, whose main purpose this is, from generic live chats, flagged as "to check: is an AI bot active?".
The notice in practice
The information must be clear and distinguishable at the latest at the first exchange. A sentence in the chat window, visible before the first reply, does this better than a line at the bottom of a terms page. For example: "You are chatting with an automated assistant." Choosing the wording and where to put it remains a decision for your own context.
What the scan detects
23 chat widgets and bot builders are recognised. A transparency notice is recognised when the page or the widget's configuration contains French phrases such as "assistant virtuel", "vous échangez avec une IA", "agent automatisé" or "réponses générées par IA" (virtual assistant, you are talking to an AI, automated agent, AI-generated answers). If a notice is found, the criterion keeps its 35 points.