How to get an AI video ad signed off by legal
Legal sees most ads at the end, and AI creative stalls there. Five questions your counsel will ask, the Italian and EU rules behind them, and a one-page file.
Legal teams tend to see a video ad at the end, with the edit locked and the launch date on the calendar. AI projects stall there: the lawyer asks questions the brief never answered, and the answers take a week. Give legal those answers at brief stage and the sign-off takes one read.
This is a practical guide. It is not legal advice, and your counsel makes the call. Your job is to hand them a file they can decide on.
Five questions legal will ask
1. Does the ad need an AI label?
Since 2 August 2026, Article 50 of the EU AI Act requires anyone who publishes a deepfake to disclose it. The Act defines a deepfake as AI-generated or manipulated image, audio or video that resembles real people, objects, places or events and would falsely appear authentic. A stylised product animation doesn’t pretend to be real footage. A photorealistic “customer” praising your product sits close to the line.
For evidently artistic, creative or fictional work, the Act lets you disclose in a way that leaves the work intact, for example on the end card. The other half of Article 50, machine-readable marking of AI output, falls on the tool providers. The Digital Omnibus gave providers whose systems were on the market before 2 August a grace period to 2 December 2026.
Decide the labelling approach in the brief and write it down.
2. Whose face and voice appear?
Each real, identifiable person needs a signed release that covers AI use of their likeness and voice. A generated presenter needs none, as long as nobody prompted the model to imitate a real person. Italy added a specific crime in October 2025: article 612-quater of the Criminal Code punishes spreading AI-falsified images, video or voice of a person without consent when it causes them unjust harm, with one to five years in prison. An AI soundalike of a famous voice carries the same risk.
3. Who owns the finished ad?
Italy’s AI law (Law 132/2025, in force since 10 October 2025) gives copyright to work made with AI tools only when it results from a person’s own intellectual work. For a brand that means two documents: a record of the human creative decisions (brief, script, direction notes, edit choices) and a contract that assigns the rights in the result to you. Check each tool’s terms for commercial use too.
4. Does anything in frame belong to someone else?
Logos, packaging, characters and protected landmarks can turn up in an AI render without anyone asking for them. Review the backgrounds as closely as the hero shot. Music and stock footage need licences, as on any shoot.
5. Is each claim true?
The IAP Code of Self-Regulation, which Italian advertisers, agencies and media accept through their associations and contracts, requires commercial communication to be honest, truthful and correct. It covers AI campaigns like any other. The AI-specific risk is a render that shows the product doing something it can’t: a fuller portion than the real pack holds, skin smoother than the cream delivers. Check each product shot against the real product.
A one-page file for legal
Send legal one page together with the brief:
- the labelling approach, and where the disclosure appears;
- each real person on screen or on the soundtrack, with release status;
- the tools used, with their commercial terms;
- licences for music, voice and stock;
- who made which creative decisions;
- each product claim, with its evidence.
Before delivery we check likeness, third-party IP, licences and disclosure; the EU rules overview explains each check. With the file above, your counsel reviews the same points before the first frame exists. Send the brief and we build the ad around them.