AI Disclosure Laws Are Not Really About AI Images
A recent video by Starla Moore discussing New York’s upcoming AI advertising disclosure law for synthetic performers caught my attention.
Bob McTaggart
5/28/20262 min read
AI Disclosure Laws Are Not Really About AI Images
They are about synthetic trust environments.
A recent video by Starla Moore discussing New York’s upcoming AI advertising disclosure law for synthetic performers caught my attention.
https://youtu.be/rbDMtE3xboU?si=qc0CUluB_S-1PVZz
And honestly, I think the real story is much bigger than Etsy.
The discussion is nominally about AI-generated models in advertising.
But underneath that is something far more important:
society is beginning to realize that AI does not just generate content.
It generates perceived reality.
That changes the governance problem completely.
For years, the central technology conversation around AI has been capability:
Can it generate images?
Can it write?
Can it imitate humans?
Can it automate work?
But now we are entering the next phase.
The trust phase.
And that phase asks very different questions:
Can consumers distinguish synthetic representation from authentic representation?
Can organizations prove what was generated, modified, simulated, or materially influenced by AI?
Can platforms maintain trust when synthetic environments become indistinguishable from real ones?
That is where this starts becoming much larger than ecommerce.
Because this same issue is now appearing across:
advertising
legal systems
journalism
education
politics
public trust institutions
social media
healthcare
insurance
hiring
digital identity
The important detail in the New York law is not the disclosure requirement itself.
It is the recognition that synthetic human representation can materially influence consumer trust and purchasing behavior.
That is a governance issue.
And it is part of a much larger societal transition.
For a long time, organizations focused on whether AI outputs were impressive.
Increasingly, they will be judged on whether they can demonstrate:
transparency
provenance
accountability
human oversight
evidentiary integrity
responsible disclosure
This is exactly why I keep saying:
AI activity is not AI governance.
Generating content is easy.
Maintaining trust around generated content is the hard part.
And the organizations that adapt fastest will not necessarily be the ones with the most advanced AI.
They will be the ones capable of proving responsible use.
That becomes even more important in environments where consumers make assumptions based on what they see.
A synthetic human holding a product is not just an image.
It is a manufactured trust signal.
And once synthetic trust signals become indistinguishable from authentic ones, regulation was always inevitable.
Personally, I do not think this trend stops with ecommerce.
I think we are watching the early formation of a much larger governance layer around synthetic media, AI disclosure, authenticity verification, and public trust preservation.
Not because society is anti-AI.
But because trust infrastructure always emerges wherever synthetic systems begin influencing human decisions at scale.
Capability alone is never enough.
Eventually every powerful system reaches the same question:
How do we prove responsible use?
Credit to Starla Moore for raising awareness around the practical implications of the upcoming New York law and how it may affect online sellers using AI-generated advertising imagery.
Bob McTaggart
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