Advertisers aiming at Pennsylvania audiences will have to flag commercials and other promotional material that artificial intelligence produced or substantially reworked, under legislation Governor Josh Shapiro has signed. The duty begins on December 21, 2026, and it travels: an ad directed at consumers in the commonwealth falls under the rule regardless of where it was made. The statute, enrolled as Act 99 of 2026, puts Pennsylvania among the first US states to demand that kind of notice.
- Key Point: Shapiro signed the measure into law as part of a batch of 58 bills, creating a labeling requirement for advertising made or materially altered with AI.
- Key Point: The warning must be visible the first time the synthetic content is shown and presented in the same format as the advertisement itself.
- Key Point: The attorney general and district attorneys enforce the law, and a court can impose a fine of up to USD 3,000 plus legal fees and costs.
- Key Point: Unlike earlier state laws focused on AI-generated performers, Pennsylvania’s version covers any image, video or audio substantially created or modified by the technology.
A label that has to survive the feed
According to the wording of the statute, the disclosure must accompany the synthetic material from the moment a consumer first encounters it, and it must be rendered in the same format as the ad. It also has to stick: the law calls for a notice that is permanent, or at least technically very difficult to remove. Nothing about the rule is limited to big-budget campaigns. A neighborhood restaurant’s promotional flyer is covered too, provided the AI-touched content could leave a false impression about where a product originates or whether it is authentic.
“If you see an ad on Facebook or on the internet and it was generated with artificial intelligence, they have to put a warning below that says it was generated with AI,” said Nick Pisciottano, the state senator who authored the bill.
Carve-outs, and an intent test dropped at the last minute
Lawmakers exempted several categories. Material that is “evidently fictitious” escapes the mandate, as do parody, satire, criticism and commentary. Advertising consisting only of text is excluded, and political spots sit entirely outside the requirement. The statute offers no precise definition of what makes content evidently fictitious, which leaves that call to whoever ends up enforcing it.
The prohibition also grew broader just before passage. An earlier draft penalized only breaches committed knowingly, recklessly or deliberately. That language was struck on the Senate floor ahead of the final vote, so a company can now be cited for a violation that nobody intended.
Small penalties and no private right to sue
Prosecutors, not consumers, carry the enforcement burden. The attorney general and district attorneys may seek an injunction or bring a civil action, and a judge can order a penalty of up to USD 3,000 on top of attorney fees and costs. Individuals have no standing to sue a company directly for breaking the rule. For a large national brand, that ceiling looks modest beside the reputational cost of a public sanction or a court order that stops a campaign mid-run.
Wider than New York and California
New York went first, requiring since June that commercials featuring an AI-generated “synthetic performer” carry a visible disclosure, with penalties reaching USD 5,000. California followed in September with a comparable statute scheduled to take effect in January 2027. Pennsylvania’s approach reaches further, because it is not restricted to synthetic people on screen: any image, video or audio that AI substantially created or altered can trigger the labeling obligation.
Support in the legislature was lopsided. The Senate approved the bill 48-2 in June, and the House ratified it 163-40 on October 7.
Shapiro described the law on social media as an important step, while arguing that more safeguards are still needed against AI’s effects on employment, child safety and elections. Some of that work is already happening closer to the ground: on the day of the signing, the Allegheny County Council voted unanimously for a separate measure that, from January, will oblige local candidates to declare when campaign material has been generated or altered with AI. Because political advertising is exempt from the statewide statute, the county rule covers terrain the legislature left untouched. Whether a $3,000 maximum, applied case by case by prosecutors, changes how campaigns are built will become clear once the December 2026 start date arrives.