Who: International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)
Where: Global
When: 20 March 2026
Law stated as at: 2 April 2026
What happened
The ICC has published guidance setting out how to apply its Advertising and Marketing Communications Code when using artificial intelligence (AI). The code provides practical guidance to advertising industry stakeholders, including advertisers, advertising agencies, self-regulatory advertising organisations and national governments.
Following the publication of the 11th edition of the code in 2024 and the growing proliferation of AI technology, both generally and within the advertising industry, the ICC has produced this guide to provide an overview of the way in which the code applies to AI and helpful materials for companies and individuals using AI in their advertising campaigns.
The guide includes a summary of the code’s rules which are most relevant to AI, as well as contextual commentary on their application.
The guide highlights that the rules and principles of the code are just as applicable to AI as to other media. Article 1 of the code, setting out the basic principles, states that all marketing communications should be legal, decent, honest and truthful.
The code states that marketing communications should not contain any claims likely to mislead consumers, regardless of how they are conveyed – by text, sound, visual elements or any combinations. This is regardless of how the misleading effect arises – directly or by implication, omission, ambiguity or exaggeration. To avoid the risk of misleading consumers, there may be circumstances where marketers will need to disclose that AI has been used in the creation of a campaign or specific elements within it. The mere use of generative AI output or AI systems will not, by itself, require disclosure, and marketers will need to pay particular attention to whether any AI use could mislead vulnerable audiences. However, a disclosure that AI has been used will ordinarily not cure claims that are false or misleading for other reasons.
Marketers have overall responsibility for their marketing communications. The use of AI does not absolve all those in the marketing ecosystem of their responsibility under the code. As organisations implement AI in their marketing processes, internal training and governance processes should be updated as necessary to ensure individuals understand their responsibilities.
The code also encourages marketers to incorporate obligations to comply with it and any other applicable regulatory or self-regulatory requirements when engaging vendors to produce advertising that may involve the use of AI. Marketers have various obligations in respect of data used in connection with AI, including notice, user control and tracking requirements. Where AI is used to generate the likeness of real people or to materially repurpose or alter an existing image, marketers should ensure consent is ordinarily obtained and should respect the scope of that consent. They should also take care not to present an AI-generated human in a way that could be perceived as a real person and a genuine user of a product, or as an authority, such as a dentist or doctor, providing an endorsement or review without an appropriate disclosure where needed.
The guide also sets out checklists for the deployment and responsible use of AI in organisations’ advertising and marketing campaigns and communications. These address a range of considerations, including organisational responsibility and ethical culture, AI tool selection, data integrity and claims verification, transparency and audience risk, compliance and oversight (see also the ICC’s general responsible marketing communications checklist), third-party relationships and legal rights and risk management and consumer trust.
Why this matters
The guide offers advertising industry stakeholders practical direction on how to comply with the ICC code when deploying AI in their marketing materials and communications. It demonstrates that marketers will need to apply established principles, such as responsibility, transparency and truthfulness, in a new context, as well as consider how to address the particular risks that AI poses in the marketing space, such as the risk of misleading consumers.
Dan Smithson, trainee solicitor with Osborne Clarke, contributed to this article.
