An Indore-based D2C brand wraps production on a launch campaign built entirely around an AI avatar spokesperson, on schedule, on budget, ready to go live the following Monday. Nobody on the team had registered that three months earlier, India's Advertising Standards Council had opened public consultation on draft rules that would require exactly this kind of ad to carry a visible 'AI-Generated' label for its full duration. The campaign wasn't illegal, ASCI's guidelines are still in draft, but it was a preventable near-miss that a five-minute compliance check would have caught.
What did ASCI actually propose, and does it apply yet?
The Advertising Standards Council of India published its Draft Guidelines for Responsible Labelling of AI-Generated Content in Advertising on May 8, 2026, opening the framework for public consultation through June 13, 2026. ASCI is a self-regulatory body, not a government regulator, so the draft isn't law, but its codes are what member brands, agencies and platforms in India voluntarily commit to enforcing, and industry coverage of the draft treats it as a strong signal of where enforcement is headed regardless of final wording.
The framework is deliberately risk-based rather than a blanket restriction on AI in advertising. As reported by Business Standard, the rules target specifically where AI content could mislead a consumer or materially shape a purchase decision, not AI usage in production generally.
How does the three-tier risk framework actually work?
- High risk, prohibited even with a disclosure label: fabricated testimonials, and content using fake authority figures such as AI-generated doctors or experts endorsing a product.
- Medium risk, mandatory 'AI-Generated' or 'Virtual Persona' labelling required: advertisements built around synthetically generated influencers or brand ambassadors, and AI-generated realistic events, settings or sound effects where the AI's involvement could materially influence a consumer's decision.
- Low risk, no disclosure required: routine production work like colour correction, decorative background generation, or content with obviously fantastical elements a viewer wouldn't mistake for reality.
Where exactly does the label have to appear?
The placement requirements are specific enough to build into a production checklist rather than a vague principle. For a virtual influencer or AI-generated persona, the disclosure has to be prominent and easily readable on the primary image or video. For video content specifically, the label needs to appear within the first five seconds of the ad and again at the end, and if the AI persona is speaking, the label has to stay visible for the full duration of that speech, not just flash once at the open.
That's a meaningfully stricter placement rule than a one-time disclaimer buried in a caption or description field, which is how a lot of AI-generated content is currently labelled across Indian social platforms.
How does this stack with Meta's own AI-disclosure rules for the same ad?
It doesn't replace them, it adds a second, India-specific layer on top. A founder running an AI-avatar-led campaign on Meta already has to navigate Meta's own AI content disclosure requirements, which govern the platform-level toggle and labelling for synthetic and digitally altered content. ASCI's draft guidelines are a separate, India-specific advertising-standards framework, so a fully compliant campaign running in India on Meta's platforms needs to satisfy both simultaneously: the platform's own AI-disclosure mechanism and ASCI's visible, in-content labelling and placement rules.
For any brand producing AI avatar or AI UGC content for the Indian market, the practical move is treating disclosure as a production-stage requirement, decided and built into the creative before final export, rather than a compliance patch applied after a campaign is already flagged.
How AIBOOTSTRAPPER helps
ASCI's guidelines are still in draft as of this writing, so we're not claiming a specific client result tied to a rule that hasn't been finalized. What we do bring to AI avatar and AI UGC production, covered in more depth in our guide to creating an AI avatar, is production discipline that's already navigating Meta's platform-level AI disclosure requirements, which makes building in a second layer of India-specific labelling a straightforward addition rather than a rebuild.
If you're producing AI avatar or AI UGC campaigns for the Indian market and want disclosure built in correctly from the first cut, book a call and we'll walk through what ASCI's draft framework means for your next campaign.
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