AI-written marketing email needs no label, but AI product imagery might
Do I have to disclose AI-generated content in marketing emails under the EU AI Act?
In one sentence
A human-reviewed AI draft of a normal promo usually needs no AI label — photorealistic AI product images often do.
Emailrules interpretation
EU AI Act marketing rules are narrower than vendor scare decks. An AI-written email a human could reject is ordinary marketing, not “public interest deepfake.” What often needs disclosure is photorealistic synthetic imagery of products or people. Check your creative pipeline, not only your .
Why it matters. Teams waste budget on blanket “AI generated” footers that the law may not require — or ship fake product shots with no disclosure.
Dotted words open definitions. See how email actually works.
What to do
Your move — not a lecture
This one needs you
No platform does this for you. One concrete move, then you are done.
Nothing. Your has no idea which of your images came out of a model, and no way to find out.
Your part: Naming an accountable reviewer per send and recording it, and flagging photorealistic AI imagery before it ships.
What to do first
Ask your designer which product images from the last quarter were AI-generated and photorealistic. That short list is your entire exposure.
You can skip this if: You do not send into the EU, or you have never put AI-generated photorealistic imagery in an email.
Who this applies to
Anyone sending marketing email into the EU. Note the split: the duty to machine-mark generated output sits with the AI tool you used, not with you. The part that applies to you is Article 50(4), which covers whoever puts the content in front of people.
Checklist
- 01Name an accountable human reviewer per send and record it. The Commission excludes superficial, solely formal or procedural checks, so spell-checking does not qualify.
- 02Treat photorealistic AI product imagery as disclosable. This is the one part with no human-review exception.
- 03Look hard at advertorials on health or finance topics styled as editorial. Health is explicitly a public-interest topic, and that combination is the riskiest thing an email team can send.
- 04Do not run fully unreviewed autonomous sends into the EU. That forfeits the exception exactly when it matters.
Skip if
Text that has undergone genuine human review with editorial responsibility, where a named person can approve, alter or reject on substantive grounds. Ordinary marketing also falls outside the public-interest category entirely.
That’s enough to act. The exact wording, the enforcement record and every primary source sit under Proof & sources, for counsel, bosses, or AI tools that need a citation. Not legal advice.
Proof
Exact position, enforcement, sources
For records and people who will check you. Skip if Monday’s move is already clear.
Source fact
Article 50 of the AI Act applies from 2 August 2026. A human-reviewed, AI-drafted marketing email does not need a label: ordinary marketing is not a matter of public interest, and human review is a second, separate exception on top of that. Photorealistic AI-generated imagery is the real exposure, because the part of the rule covering deepfakes has no human-review exception.
What happens if you do not
Penalties for Article 50 breaches sit in the 15,000,000 euro or 3 percent of worldwide turnover tier. The obligation is one day old at the time of writing, so there is no enforcement record at all yet. The high-risk chapter was deferred to December 2027, but Article 50 was not deferred.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act), Article 50Published 1 Aug 2024Read primary source
- European Commission, FAQ on transparency obligations under Article 50Published 20 Jul 2026Read primary source
- Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI), deferring the high-risk chapter but not Article 50Published 24 Jul 2026Read primary source
History of this page
- Status moved to In force as of 2 August 2026.
- Added after the Digital Omnibus confirmed Article 50 was not deferred.
Take this with you
GET https://emailrules.today/rules/eu-ai-act-article-50-marketing-email?format=json
Same URL, same answer, every field including the ones behind the Proof tab. An Accept: application/json header on the plain URL does the same thing. All the endpoints.