Authors: Johan Peen, COO & Rasmus Lenler-Petersen, VP & Group Head of Legal
Most AI-assisted marketing doesn’t need a label, but some things do. In this article, we will lay out how we handle this as an AI and marketing consultancy running campaigns through the EU (and the world).
Since 2 August, we have had some version of the same conversation almost daily. A marketing leader or practitioner reads that the EU AI Act now applies, or that the vast majority of it is delayed. Now they want to understand which is true and if they should label everything they do.
Right now, this confusion is both slowing down AI adoption and putting companies in legal risk. We will try to explain this before the confusion does more damage than the regulation.
In late July, days before the Act’s biggest deadline, the so-called Digital Omnibus (Regulation (EU) 2026/1744) entered into force. It postponed the heavy high-risk obligations, the ones covering things like credit score, CV screening, and biometrics, to December 2027 and August 2028. That is, they delayed what you might have read about.
What was not postponed was Article 50, which is the transparency rules (we’ll explain). Those applied on 2 August 2026 together with fines up to €15m or 3% of global turnover (whatever is highest). Article 50 covers chatbots, AI-generated content and deepfakes. That is the part of the law that touches marketing.
So, if you are a marketeer you really do need to understand this. We promise that someone important will ask you sooner rather than later.
The AI Act regulates the “AI tool” talking directly to customers, not the marketeer using the “AI tool”. A team that uses AI to draft, edit, resize, translate and analyse does not need to label. Duties appear where AI itself faces the customer like a chatbot, a synthetic person, media that pretends to be real, or text published without a human taking responsibility.
Things like using AI for smart bidding, dynamic creatives, and audience expansion are all legal. Normal personalisation (e.g. retargeting a cart abandoner) and persuasion are not what this law is about.
But obviously you are not allowed to exploit anyone! AI that leverages someone’s age, disability, debt or distress, or that uses subliminal techniques (such as hidden visual or audio stimuli) has been prohibited since Feb 2025.
And of course, AI-driven persuasion aimed at children.
Text with genuine human review, where a person or company carries editorial responsibility, does not need an AI label. That covers most marketing work today.
A concrete case: Your team drafts thousands of product descriptions with AI and an editor reviews and approves them. No label is needed here.
For text that informs the public, like a bank’s economy guide, the law itself requires review or a label. For ordinary marketing copy, human sign-off is not a legal condition, but it’s where we draw the line as best practice.
Clearly stylised or obviously synthetic imagery needs no label, but the file must carry a machine-readable mark identifying it as AI-generated. However, photoreal AI imagery the audience could take as real (like products, places and events, not just people) needs a visible ‘AI-generated’ label on top of the machine-readable mark. The test: could the audience reasonably believe this is real? Then label it.
The duty sits with the tool provider, with a runway to 2 Dec 2026 for tools already on the market before 2 August 2026; new tools must comply from day one.
Your job is to buy tools that do it and to check that the mark services your editing and export chain.
This should be pretty self-explanatory, but a realistic depiction of a real person doing or saying something they did not do is a deepfake. It, of course, needs labelling and the person’s consent.
Remember that it also covers people that you know in your own company (like a CEO saying welcome in different languages on a website).
People must be told if they are talking to AI unless it is obvious from the context. That covers the shopping assistant, lead-gen bot, support bot, etc.
You make it compliant with one sentence: “Hi, I’m X brand’s AI assistant.” in the first interaction.
The AI Act applies to all 27 EU countries, so it is the same playbook.
Some markets worth noting though. Spain is preparing a national law with fines up to €35m for unlabelled content, so Spanish campaigns might set the bar in the future.
The UK and Norway sit outside the Act for now, but the Act follows the audience rather than your company’s address. If the EU customers see the content, run the EU standard.
The rules are the same, but the risk is not. B2B and SaaS marketing sits in the calm end, where reviewed content and disclosed demo bots cover most of it. E-com and retail carry medium exposure through sheer volume of AI-assisted assets and the rise of shopping assistants.
Finance and insurance sit at the sharp end, because the vulnerability prohibitions hit the hardest. Health and pharma have rightly so always been strict, and that applies to using AI as well. Brands marketing to children treat AI-driven persuasion as off limits.
It’s big stakes. Prohibited practices: €35m or 7% of worldwide turnover, in force since Feb 2025. Transparency violations: €15m or 3%, applicable since 2 Aug 2026. Misleading the authorities: €7.5m or 1%. The percentage applies to group turnover, whichever is highest.
Obviously the biggest risk is that your audience loses trust in your brand, so don’t get this wrong.
Sources
Disclaimer
This article is for general information only and cannot replace legal counselling. s360 and its employees do not provide or render legal advice in any way, including regarding the labelling of AI-generated content, the use of AI tools, or any third party’s setup and use of media platforms. It is solely up to the reader, or any other third party, to assess, judge and ensure its own lawful use of AI and media platforms, including compliance with the EU AI Act, marketing law and data protection rules. s360 does not accept any responsibility for direct or indirect losses as a consequence of the use of this article, including any loss due to insufficient or wrong information, assessments or other matters. We recommend seeking advice from a qualified lawyer if you are in doubt about any legal requirements, AI Act or GDPR compliance, and/or the use of data.
s360 is a marketing and AI consultancy founded in 2011. From our 10 offices across 8 European countries, our team of more than 330 specialists and engineers works together on the same mission: to help brands and retailers grow.
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