Transparency
AI Act & transparency
We make your images with AI. We say so on the file.
Since 2 August 2026 the EU asks whoever publishes an AI-generated image of a real product to say that it is one. We have not treated that as a burden but as part of the delivery. You get your images, plus the line of text to place them with. Beyond that you do not have to think about it.
This page describes our own practice and the rules as we read them. It is not legal advice. For your own situation — certainly if you sell outside the EU — ask a qualified adviser.
Why we are open about this
A brand that uses AI and hides it has a problem the moment somebody notices. A brand that simply says so has a story: no samples flying around the world, no shoot booked three weeks ahead, no crew of eight for twelve products.
The disclosure costs you nothing. Its absence can cost you a customer.
What these rules are aimed at
It helps to know where this law comes from. The trigger was deep fakes: video of politicians saying things they never said, invented events presented as news, voices cloned to defraud people. That is what Article 50 was written for, and that is where the regulators are looking.
A product photograph of a jacket on a model sits at the other end of that spectrum. Nobody is misled about an event, no public opinion is being steered, and the buyer receives exactly the product they ordered.
The duty applies anyway, and it is worth being precise about why rather than hoping. The Commission published its final guidance on 20 July 2026 and confirmed the accompanying code of practice as adequate; both have applied since 2 August 2026. That guidance treats marketing imagery that makes a product look different from reality as falling under the disclosure duty, and it reads the exception for evidently creative work narrowly. The duty sits on whoever publishes the image — in practice, you. So we sort it out properly, and it stays a formality of a few seconds rather than a chapter of your operation.
What has always applied, and still does: the jacket in the photograph has to be the jacket in the box. That is not a new AI rule. That is honest selling, and it was exactly the same with a traditional photoshoot. That is where our attention goes, and where yours should go too.
What you get from us
Three things, and all three exist today. If we build more, this list grows — it does not describe anything that is coming.
- A ready-made line of text
- One sentence to place under your product gallery or in your product information block, in English and Dutch. In English: “This image was created with AI from photographs of the actual product.” You are free to word it differently, as long as a reader meets it at the same moment they meet the image.
- An approval record per order
- On an order, you approve or request a revision on each image individually in your portal, and every one of those decisions is stored against that image with the date it was made. If somebody later asks where an image came from and who signed it off, it is there and you can read it back from your own link.
- A written summary on request
- Source files supplied, visuals produced, dates, and confirmation that a person checked each one before delivery. A person writes that summary. There is no button here that generates one, and we are not going to imply there is.
What this really turns on: the image has to be right
A disclosure does not make an inaccurate image acceptable. If the colour, the material or the fit in the photograph differs from the product in the box, that is misleading — with or without a label, with or without AI. This rule is as old as mail order. It is what returns and bad reviews come from, and it weighs heavier than any new regulation.
- Photographed The product itself, out of the files you supply. This is the one region of the frame that was not invented, and it is the part your customer actually receives.
- Built The lighting, the background, the model, the motion. An AI image production makes all of it. None of it is a place that exists or a shoot that happened.
- Checked by a person Before anything leaves, a person finishes the frame and looks at it against the product you ship. That pass covers the whole image, not only the built half of it.
Which is why we work the way we do:
- Real photographs of the front and the back are both required. We do not invent your product, we re-photograph it — and a catalog set delivers a back image, so we ask for the back rather than guess at a print or a seam you cannot see from the front.
- We ask about the material. 100% cotton falls differently from polyester, and leather catches light differently. That has to be visible.
- A close-up and a worn shot are optional. Each makes one specific thing more accurate. If the product has no logo or hardware to close in on, the close-up you get back is a fabric shot instead.
- You approve every image before it leaves your order.
What to do when you publish
- Place the disclosure where the image is. Visible at the same moment as the image — not tucked behind “read more”. The guidance is explicit that a reader has to meet it on first exposure.
- Hold the image against the real product. Colour, material, fit — does it match? If not, tell us and we will change it.
- Turn on the AI label on social. Instagram and TikTok have their own switch for it.
Images generated before 2 August 2026 do not have to be labelled retroactively — for images the date they were made is what counts, not the date you publish them. (For text it is the other way round.) You are free to label older work anyway, and nobody expects you to go through your archive.
What we do not claim
A lot gets shouted about this subject. We stick to what we can support.
- We are not lawyers.
- This page is information, not legal advice.
- Our human check does not exempt your images from the disclosure duty.
- That exemption in the law is for text on matters of public interest, not for images. Anyone claiming otherwise has not read it.
- Using the EU icon does not make you compliant.
- It is an aid, not a certification. We supply it because it is recognisable, not because it covers anything.
- Every file we deliver carries a machine-readable provenance tag, and one line of it is ours.
- We write an IPTC DigitalSourceType tag into every delivered file, including the WebP, where the conversion discarded whatever the model provider had put there. The value says whether a real photograph went into it: your product photo did, so a delivered visual is marked “partly made by a model”. Brand-neutral imagery with no product in it does not, and is marked “made by a model” — the stronger of the two. We pick the value that is true of the file rather than one value for everything. What the provider marked itself we leave alone; we remove nothing. It is not a guarantee: any program that re-saves an image can strip the tag, and providers of systems already on the market have until 2 December 2026 to mark at all. So do not rely on a file to identify itself. The disclosure that counts is the visible one, the one you place.
- Marketplaces have their own image rules.
- Zalando, Amazon, bol and About You sometimes set stricter requirements than the law does, particularly for the main image. You check those for your own channels — and we are glad to help you work it out.
Who is responsible for what
We supply the images and the accompanying text. What happens with them after that is yours to decide.
You are responsible for:
- the accuracy of the product information you supply
- checking that the delivered image matches your actual product
- the choice of where, when and on which channel you publish
- compliance with the rules that apply on your channels and in your markets
VISUAILS is not liable for legal consequences arising from the publication or use of delivered images. The information on this page has been compiled to the best of our knowledge, but it is not legal advice and cannot replace it. The full arrangement is in our terms and conditions.
That is not us keeping our distance — we are glad to help you work it out, and we correct an image that is wrong without argument. But you know your product and your market, and that responsibility is not ours to take from you.
We are in the EU
VISUAILS is a Dutch company based in Enschede. Your point of contact sits in the same time zone and under the same regulation as you. No support form twelve hours away.
Questions about how this works out for your brand?
Email us or send a message on WhatsApp. We will help you work out where the disclosure should sit, even if you are not a customer yet.