Labelling AI images on Facebook and Instagram

What Facebook and Instagram requires

Posts

• Meta adds the label “AI info” (called “Made with AI” until July 2024) when it detects industry signals such as C2PA or IPTC in the image, or when users disclose AI themselves.
• For photorealistic video and realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, Meta requires users to disclose it.
• If content was only edited with AI, the notice has been in the post's menu since September 2024 rather than directly on it.

Ads

In ads, “AI info” only appears when the image was created or edited with Meta's own generative AI tools. For images from other AI tools, Meta adds no automatic label, except for political ads with their own disclosure duty.

How this relates to your Article 50 duty

Anyone who uses an AI system professionally to generate or manipulate image, video or audio content that is a deep fake must disclose it (Article 50(4) AI Act). A retailer is that deployer when it, or a contractor working to its instructions, uses AI for product or advertising images (guidelines, paras. 12 and 14). The duty follows the image, not the platform: it applies in your own store just as on a marketplace. Whether an image is affected is answered by the labelling check.

A notice in the menu is not visible without a click. Under the Code of Practice, the “AI” should be visible without interaction. For ads with images from other AI tools there is no automatic label at all: you label them yourself.

Facebook and Instagram is on the Commission's list of very large online platforms. Under the guidelines, deployers may rely on such a platform's labelling tools within that platform if the tools allow a clear and distinguishable disclosure, and only in the context of that platform (para. 126). How far this carries for a given tool is not settled. A platform label that appears only sometimes, or only after a click, does not automatically replace your own visible disclosure.

Steps

1. Check every AI image with the labelling check.
2. Ads with images from other AI tools: use a copy with the label burned in from Label an AI image or a clear notice in the creative. Catalogue ads pull images from your product feed, so check the feed as well.
3. Posts: use Meta's disclosure when posting where it is offered, and add a visible label in the image if the notice would otherwise only sit in the menu.
4. Do not remove C2PA or IPTC data. It is the signal Meta uses to detect AI.

Not legal advice. Platform rules change; the platform's current wording is what counts. A label does not make a misleading image lawful.

Not legal advice. This content explains the law based on primary sources; it does not replace an assessment of your individual case.