Canada AI ad disclosure: #MadeWithAI and AI influencer testimonials

In Canada, the industry body Ad Standards says content generated or significantly altered using AI should be disclosed, with #MadeWithAI or #AIcreated as its examples. That comes from its Influencer Marketing Disclosure Guidelines, released in October 2025. It is self-regulatory guidance rather than a statute, and it speaks to influencer marketing, so an AI avatar presenting your product falls under its AI-influencer lines.

Ad Standards' influencer marketing page lists the guidelines, and I could read only that page, not the PDF text. The wording below comes from Bennett Jones' summary, read on 2026-10-03, so check it against the guidelines before relying on it. Nothing here is legal advice.

What do the guidelines say about AI?

As summarized by Bennett Jones, there are four points a video ad team needs:

• Content generated or significantly altered using AI should be disclosed, for example #MadeWithAI or #AIcreated.
• An AI-generated influencer is not a real person, but that does not remove the duty to disclose a material connection with the brand.
• An AI influencer cannot give a testimonial about a good or service it cannot experience itself; the example given is taste.
• Best-practice labels for a virtual presenter include #virtualinfluencer, #AIinfluencer or #AIcreated.

Where does each disclosure go on an avatar ad?

Hashtags live in the post, not the video file. Sume generates and edits the file; the caption field, the platform's AI toggle and the paid-partnership tag belong to the publishing platform. Sume's avatar video route makes a script-driven talking video from a ready avatar, 4 to 60 seconds long, so the script is where a testimonial problem starts.

How do I check the script after the render?

A script edit is cheap before a render and a re-render is not, so read the script first. After the render, POST /v1/video-inspect with transcribe: true returns the words the avatar actually says, at $0.01 per audio minute, so you can search it for sensory claims such as taste, smell or feel. Add segmentation: { "mode": "sentence" } and it also returns sentence-level segments[]. If your ad also carries a spoken disclosure, check that it reached the final mix.

How does this compare with other markets?

Rules differ by country and by what they cover. India's advertising council asks three questions on when an AI ad needs a label, and the UK takes a misleading-or-not approach in its own AI-in-ads guidance. For the platform side of the label, see how to label a TikTok ad as AI-generated.