Guest article by Whats New In Publishing - Jez Walters
Last month, Article 50 of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act came into full force. For UK businesses, at a surface level, the Act does not apply because we are not subject to EU Law.
Indeed, the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has confirmed there’s no equivalent blanket UK requirement yet, so a UK-only brand isn’t caught by Article 50 at all.
So what’s the problem? If you are running an ad or marketing campaign aimed (partly or wholly) at EU consumers, then the ruling 100% applies to you. In short, you are duty-bound to abide by the Act.
What Article 50 Actually Requires
Article 50 is clear about the rules and guidelines marketers need to follow.
Firstly, if you use AI to generate images, audio, video of real people, places, or events, you now have to disclose it. This might include AI voiceovers, deepfake testimonials, AI footage of real locations and AI versions of true events – anything where AI is used to alter or compose text, imagery or video to make events look real.
Secondly, the disclosure you are required to implement needs to be visible, prominent and transparent. This means that a small disclaimer with a typographic point size of 3 hidden at the bottom right of an ad won’t cut it. Similarly, a verbal disclaimer on a video sped up X2 to get it over with will similarly fall foul of the EU AI Act.
There are simply no shortcuts or workarounds. The EU AI Act demands transparency. Concretely it requires:
Video/audio: a visible on-screen label (e.g. ‘AI-generated’ or ‘AI voice’) appearing from the first frame or first seconds (not just in a ‘see more’ description or end card).
Images: a visible watermark or caption on the image itself (not a note in the alt text or a linked policy page).
Social ads: the label has to appear in the ad unit as the viewer scrolls past it (not require a click-through to a landing page or footer disclaimer).
What Marketers Must Do Immediately
Much has already been written about the EU AI Act in the marketing press, but as privacy and data protection professionals, we see a glaring gap. Indeed, this gap is not just limited to the EU AI Act, we come across it frequently in many areas of our work.
And what’s that? It’s not enough to know the compliance obligations needed to be legally watertight. Somebody has to take ownership of the issue and sign off all marcoms as a standard point of procedure.
Without such a procedure - implemented across the business - marketing campaigns, promos and voiceovers can slip through the cracks. And all it takes is just one campaign to be non-compliant and the ramifications could be severe.
How severe? Well, at this point, no organisation has been fined or held to account by the ruling. But it’s coming, and if Uber’s recent €825m fine is any guide, Brussels’ isn’t shy about big penalties once it starts enforcing.
Just as importantly, it will ensure that your own customer-base doesn’t catch you out. The damage to your own trust and reputation could be just as worse as any potential financial fallout.
Workflow, Workflow and…Workflow
To reiterate, it’s vital that someone in your organisation is tasked immediately with signing off any marketing campaigns that could target EU consumers.
This won’t change your legal obligations, nor will it indemnify any organisation who doesn’t abide by the law. But what it will do is ensure that no marketing campaign leaves the building without being signed off for compliance to Article 50 of the EU AI Act.
Creative teams, account staff, client brands can then all relax in the knowledge that there is a professional overseeing each and every campaign, and that nothing will leave the building without that person’s sign off.
With that in place, no UK company should be at risk of being hauled to Brussels to explain why an AI voiceover wasn’t labeled as such, or whether a person was real or not. And no UK company should then be at risk of incurring a fine that could wipe a year’s worth of profits at the stroke of a judge’s pen.
Get your house in order!
Andy Chesterman, Managing Director, Privacy Helper
About: Privacy Helper provides practical, no-nonsense data protection consultancy for UK and EU businesses. Acting as an outsourced Data Protection Officer, the firm helps companies manage GDPR and regulatory change in a way that supports operations rather than slowing them down. It focuses on real-world application rather than legal theory, working with boards and operational teams to identify risk, implement workable processes and give businesses the confidence to use data properly.