The four carve-outs
Deepfakes come first. Where AI generates or manipulates image, audio, or video forming part of an evidently artistic, creative, satirical, or fictional work, the duty softens rather than lifts: artificial generation still has to be disclosed, but in a manner that does not hamper the display or enjoyment of the work. The carve-out falls away where the use is authorized by law to detect, prevent, or investigate criminal offenses.
The text exemption is narrower than it sounds. It applies to AI-generated or manipulated text published to inform the public on matters of public interest, and only where the content has been through human review or editorial control with a natural or legal person holding editorial responsibility for the publication.
Two more follow. An AI system performing an assistive function for standard editing is exempt provided it does not substantially alter the input data or its semantics. And a system designed to interact directly with people needs no disclosure where the interaction is obvious to a natural person who is reasonably well-informed, observant and circumspect, with context and circumstances deciding what counts as obvious.
Which of these can a merchant rely on?
Exemption three is where most ecommerce AI use lives. Drafting help, tightening a description, generating variations on copy a person wrote: that reads like an assistive function for standard editing. Whether it qualifies turns entirely on substantially alter, and the Commission has not said what substantial means.
The same gap runs through the rest. There is no definition of what makes an interaction obvious, none for an appropriate manner of disclosure, no threshold for what counts as public interest, and no stated level of human review sufficient to satisfy the editorial-control condition. Each exemption is legible; each depends on a term that is not.
For a store selling into the EU, the practical position has barely moved since the rules bound on 2 August. The obligation to label AI-generated published content still sits with the deployer, the exemption most likely to apply cannot be assessed without a definition that does not exist, and the penalty for guessing wrong is scaled to worldwide turnover.
What to do about it
Log what AI touched, and in what role
The exemption you would claim depends on the difference between assisting an edit and producing the text. That distinction is invisible after publication unless somebody recorded it. If you sell into the EU, note at the point of publishing which pages used AI and how, so the question is answerable later without reconstruction.
Send exemption three to counsel, not to marketing
Whether your use of AI substantially alters the input is a legal reading of an undefined term, with fines sized to worldwide turnover behind it. That belongs with a lawyer holding an EU practice. Nothing published so far lets a marketing team answer it responsibly.