AI-generated ads should be exempt from EU transparency rules, retail assoc. says(reuters.com)
reuters.com
AI-generated ads should be exempt from EU transparency rules, retail assoc. says
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/ai-generated-ads-should-be-exempt-eu-transparency-rules-retail-association-says-2026-06-19/
5 comments
In theory, I don't see any particular reason for AI-generated ads to be specially labeled as such. But two rules I would suggest:
- If ads, products, or whatever claim to be AI-free, then the penalties for the claim being untrue are pretty severe.
- "The AI goofed" excuses - whether in advertising claims, support chatbot responses, employment decisions, or whatever - will get the same legal consideration as "the unsupervised illiterates in our Packaging Dept. swapped the labels between the baby formula and the rat poison yet again" excuses.
- If ads, products, or whatever claim to be AI-free, then the penalties for the claim being untrue are pretty severe.
- "The AI goofed" excuses - whether in advertising claims, support chatbot responses, employment decisions, or whatever - will get the same legal consideration as "the unsupervised illiterates in our Packaging Dept. swapped the labels between the baby formula and the rat poison yet again" excuses.
> The regulation should not include AI-generated ads "not intended to mislead users, for example, generating an image of a living room to showcase a sofa, or enhancing product visuals for presentation purposes", the letter said.
While ads have always been misleading (think gluing burgers together) this just seems lazy to me. Put a real sofa in a room. If that's so hard to do then how am I going to put your sofa in my house!
While ads have always been misleading (think gluing burgers together) this just seems lazy to me. Put a real sofa in a room. If that's so hard to do then how am I going to put your sofa in my house!
> ... not intended to mislead users, for example, generating an image of a living room to showcase a sofa,
So it would be okay for AI to rescale a sofa to appear proportionate to other furniture in a typical room, even if the actual sofa is much larger, or (more likely) much smaller than depicted?
So it would be okay for AI to rescale a sofa to appear proportionate to other furniture in a typical room, even if the actual sofa is much larger, or (more likely) much smaller than depicted?
"Eurocommerce, the European retail association whose members include Amazon, H&M, Inditex, and Ikea, is asking EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen to exempt AI-generated advertisements from the bloc's new regulation requiring disclosure of AI use."
Ads would be one of the main reasons to have this legislation. It's not like an unannounced propaganda campaign (which is still a valid concern) is going to label anything regardless of laws.
Gorilla beds come to mind.
Market for lemons, unfortunately; even though image and video AI can help a lot of people better visualise what e.g. a sofa might look like in their living room, or a particular T-shirt if they were wearing it, it's also very capable of being misleading at best, and a high-throughput fully automated scam agent at worst.
(The latter has a similar caveat as aforementioned propaganda, so be wary of "something must be done, this is something, therefore it must be done"; I believe it will help, but can't prove it will help).