Witness 0.8.0 released: a visible label for audio and video, and a legal status changelog

Witness 0.8.0 is out: the free packages @sweberdev/witness and @sweberdev/witness-react are at 0.5.0, the Pro packages at 0.8.0.

Free 0.5.0: a visible label with audio and video

XMP marking is for machines. For deepfake audio and video, Article 50(4) also asks for a disclosure people can see. The new <witness-player> element wraps an <audio> or <video> and keeps the label with it: an overlay in the corner of a video, a bar above the controls of an audio player. kind="deepfake" gives the "Artificially generated" wording in English, German, French and Italian. In React the same is AiPlayer.

<witness-player kind="deepfake" generator="video-model" href="/ki">
  <video src="clip.mp4" controls></video>
</witness-player>

Witness does not decide whether something counts as a deepfake or whether an exception applies; it only makes the label easy to show.

Pro 0.8.0: a legal status you can follow

Article 50 and the texts around it are still moving. Witness Pro now keeps a changelog of the legal wording and dates it works with, named by a version (today 2026-10).

• The client report names the status it follows and lists what changed since your register was last reviewed, in four languages.
• witness-report legal shows those changes, and --accept records the current status in the register.
• witness-report check warns when a newer status exists, so a CI job tells you to read the changes.
• The scanner accepts <witness-player> as the visible label of the audio or video it wraps.

npx witness-report legal
npx witness-report legal --accept

The changelog records what Witness uses; it is not legal advice and does not tell you what your own duties are. See the audio and video guide, the report docs and the Witness page for the Pro edition.