Australia AI ad disclosure: no blanket rule, and the AANA review

Not yet. As of a February 2026 report, Australia has no blanket rule requiring advertisers to disclose AI in an ad. Ad Standards, which handles complaints against the advertising codes, "encourages transparent, responsible advertising practices", and the industry body that writes the code, the AANA, asked in a consultation whether the code should add a rule or guidance specific to AI.

This post rests on one news article, SmartCompany's report of 13 February 2026, read on 2026-10-03. I tried the AANA's discussion paper, but its text did not extract, so the AANA's own wording is not quoted here. Check the AANA's site for the result of the review before you rely on any of this; none of it is legal advice.

What does Ad Standards say today?

Per SmartCompany, Ad Standards says existing advertising codes apply regardless of how content is created, and that no specific rule yet governs disclosing AI in ads. Ad Standards' Greg Wallace is quoted: "With AI becoming more common, its potential to mislead is a growing area of public concern." The same report says the complaints Ad Standards has received about AI in advertising are relatively few, and mostly general objections to AI rather than breaches of existing codes.

What did the AANA consultation ask?

The AANA released a consultation paper in October 2025. SmartCompany reports that it asks two things: whether the code should include a "specific rule or guidance dealing with AI in advertising", and whether general misleading-and-deceptive rules, aligned with the Australian Consumer Law, would already capture the problems generative AI creates. The code is updated about every five years, and the report expects the next update later in 2026.

How do I prepare a video ad while the rule is open?

Whatever the AANA decides, an ad that misleads is a problem today, so the useful work is checking the final file. Sume's video inspect returns stills and, with transcribe: true, the transcript of a clip you have stored on media.sume.com, so a reviewer can read what a viewer will see and hear. Inspect never re-encodes the clip and never produces an MP4.

If you decide to add a disclosure line anyway, video captions can burn authored cues onto the video, and Timeline 1.0 is the route when the same cut needs several lengths or shapes. Keep a dated note of the rule you checked and the day you read it, as in a policy snapshot file, since this one is moving.

How does this compare with the UK and the platforms?

The UK's regulator takes a similar line: no AI-specific rule, but ads must not mislead, covered in ASA on AI deepfake ads. The platforms are stricter than either country's code in places; see AI label rules for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Meta in one table. And a creator's footage still deserves a transcript read before paid reuse.