TikTok ad AI disclosure: the AIGC label or your own caption

TikTok's ad policy says to apply the AIGC label, or add a clear disclaimer, caption, watermark or sticker of your own, and that undisclosed AI-generated ads will be rejected or restricted. Sume can burn a caption or overlay a still into the video, but it does not apply TikTok's AIGC label, which you set in TikTok.

The quotes are from TikTok's Misleading and False Content policy and its newsroom post (read 2026-10-10). Whether your particular wording satisfies the reviewer is TikTok's call.

What the policy page says

The policy page directs advertisers to apply the AIGC label, or add a clear disclaimer, caption, watermark or sticker of their own. It says that if TikTok identifies AI-generated content that has not been disclosed, the ad will be rejected or restricted. The newsroom post describes labels for content completely generated or significantly edited by AI, including realistic images, audio or video, and says TikTok is testing automatic detection and renaming AI effects to include AI in their names.

The newsroom post does not mention C2PA in the version I fetched, and it gives no penalty detail, so I am not stating either.

What Sume can put on the pixels

Sume does not set a TikTok label. It can, however, make your own disclosure part of the file. Two documented routes exist.

• Video captions: send a public HTTPS video URL and cues with text, start and end to burn authored overlay text, for example a short line that says the clip was made with AI.
• Timeline compose: put one still, such as a small badge image you supply, on screen over a clip with the overlay operation; the output length comes from the video layer, with a 300-second ceiling.
• Video filter: ops are limited to dim and crop, and drawtext is not on the filtergraph allowlist, so use captions for text.

Choosing a route

The table sets the options side by side. Each is a way to make your own disclosure visible; none of them replaces the platform label unless TikTok accepts it as the clear disclaimer the policy describes.

Keep it honest and legible

A disclaimer only works if a viewer can read it. Put it inside the safe area, hold it on screen for the whole clip or long enough to read, and avoid a style that hides the words. If your generated clip is silent, remember that speech captions fail on silent clips; send cues. Also keep a note of which clips carried which disclosure, so a rejection can be answered quickly.

Which route to pick usually comes down to speed. The platform label is applied in TikTok's own tools and needs no render. A burned caption is a render job, so it adds a step and some spend, but it travels with the file if you reuse the clip on another platform. A sticker or watermark overlay is the same kind of step. If you are about to publish the same video across several platforms, a burned disclosure is the only one of the three that does not depend on each platform's settings.

Be careful with wording. A line such as made with AI is clear; a vague hashtag or a tiny corner mark may not meet the clear disclaimer test the policy describes. TikTok decides, so a more visible line is the lower-risk choice. And keep a copy of the rendered file, so if an ad is rejected you can show exactly what was on screen.