What an AI disclosure on your website should actually say (with a template you can copy)
Superseded, 26 September 2026: The EU AI Act for small Irish and UK businesses: what actually applies to you covers the same ground, with the full record behind it.
The businesses we look at mostly do not have an AI compliance problem. They have a wording problem. They use AI somewhere on the site, they know they are supposed to say so, and nobody has told them what the sentence should say.
Here is the sentence, the places it goes, and a template you can adapt.
The one-line version
If someone is interacting with an AI (a chat assistant, an automated agent, an AI receptionist), they have to be told before or at the moment of the interaction. A policy page does not count. Here is the shortest compliant version that sounds like a human wrote it:
You are chatting with an AI assistant. A member of our team reads every conversation and can step in at any point.
That is it. Two clauses carry the notice: what the thing is, and that a human is behind it. The second clause is optional. It stops the notice from feeling like a warning.
Where the notice goes
| Situation | Where the disclosure belongs |
|---|---|
| Chat widget or AI assistant | Pinned inside the chat window header or as the first message, visible before the visitor types |
| Voice or phone agent | Stated at the start of the call, before the caller gives any details |
| AI-generated images or video on the site | A label on or beside the media itself |
| AI-generated audio or voice | A note in the player or in the description of the recording |
| AI tools used behind the scenes (drafting, summaries) | An "AI at Rennwick" style page, linked from the footer; this is transparency rather than a per-item duty |
The further the disclosure sits from where the person meets the AI, the less it counts. A line in a privacy policy on a separate page is the mistake we see most, and it is the most likely to be treated as no disclosure at all.
The template
Adapt the bracketed parts, and keep it short enough that someone actually reads it.
How we use AI at [Company]
Three places use AI tools:
- Our website assistant. This site's chat window is an AI assistant. It answers the common questions and books calls. Every conversation is read by [a member of our team], who can step in at any time.
- Content production. Some images and text on this site were created or edited with AI tools, then reviewed and edited by us before publishing. AI-created images and video are labelled where they appear.
- Behind the scenes. We use AI tools to help draft emails, summarise documents and check our writing. Everything we send or publish has a person responsible for it.
We make no automated decisions about customers, credit, employment or pricing. Your data is not sold or shared with AI providers.
Questions about any of this go to [email]. Last reviewed: [date].
Three things separate a notice from a gesture. Name where the tools are used. Say who is accountable. Put a date on it.
If you build or sell AI systems
The bar runs higher than disclosure. Providers of generative systems also have to mark output in a machine-readable way (provenance metadata such as C2PA), so other systems can tell the content was AI-generated. Systems already on the market before 2 August 2026 have a transitional period to 2 December 2026. Anything launched after that gets none. A voluntary Code of Practice on the transparency of AI-generated content was published in June 2026. Following it is one accepted way to demonstrate the marking and labelling duties are met.
Keep the evidence
Everyone skips this part. Keep a short dated file: what you use AI for, which notices are live and where, who wrote the wording, and when you last checked. Five lines is enough to answer the question you will need later. What did you do, and when?
What this costs you
If you already know your own site, two hours of someone's attention. One paragraph rewritten, one footer link, one footer page, one date. If you would rather not touch it, or you want the labelling and the evidence file done alongside the wording, the AI Act Fix is a fixed €390. It includes the disclosure copy, the AI page, the media labels and the evidence file.
Begin with the free check at https://rennwick.com/ai-act-check/. It tells you which of these apply to your site before you spend anything.
This article explains the rules and gives an example. It is not legal advice.