What a correct label looks like
The Commission’s Code of Practice sets out how an AI label must look and where it must sit, in more detail than most teams expect. Here is the label we built to it, applied correctly, and the four mistakes we find most often.
The specimens were drawn by AI, using computer code. They’re stylised line drawings that couldn’t pass as photographs, so none of them legally needs a label. Each stands for a real scenario, described underneath, and where it carries a label, the label is there to demonstrate.
The label itself
- The capital letters AI, exactly the same height
- The Code asks for letters of the same vertical dimension. In many typefaces the point of a capital A rises slightly above the other capitals, so that it looks the same height to the eye. Read strictly, that fails. So this mark is drawn, and the A has a flat top.
- Built for any background, and for assistive technology
- The white edge holds it apart from dark images and the black plate from pale ones. Screen readers, which read pages aloud for people with sight loss, announce it before the image, and it keeps its colours in Windows High Contrast Mode.
On an image
Tap or click a label to see its second layer, the extra detail the Code encourages.
AI-generated image. Show how it was made.
Generated by AI: the whole image.
Correct
Scenario: a product image made entirely by an image model. Label in the top right corner with nothing over it, visible from the first moment. Measures 1.1 and 1.2.2(a).
AI-modified image. Show how it was made.
Modified by AI: a feature the real product doesn’t have was added to a photograph.
That is the scenario. The drawing itself was generated with AI.
Correct
Scenario: a product photograph where AI added a feature the real product doesn’t have. The second layer, open here, says what changed. Measure 1.1(b).
Correct, with no label
Scenario: the product photographed as it is, with the setting generated. Whether a generated setting needs a label depends on what it implies, and we record the reasoning for every one. Commitment 2.
Where it goes wrong
These are the four mistakes we find most often, marked up the way a proofreader would.
Wrong
Bottom corner, half under the shop button. Something sits between the viewer and the label, and on a phone the button covers it completely. Measure 1.2.2(a): no intervening overlay.
Wrong
Faint grey “ai” in lower case. It fails contrast, the letters aren’t capitals, and a screen reader never announces it. Measure 1.1(a) and the accessibility requirements.
Wrong
An information button the viewer has to tap before learning anything. Recognition mustn’t depend on the viewer doing something. Measure 1.2.1(a).
Wrong
Letters stretched sideways to fill a slot in the layout. The proportions have to survive resizing. Measure 1.1(a).
Video, audio, text and venues
Every format has its own rules. Video has to bring the label back in certain circumstances, and audio needs a spoken disclaimer. Text, exhibitions and internal training material each follow rules of their own, and artistic work gets different placement again.
We set all of this out for your formats as part of an audit.