AI Marketing Claims Substantiation Procedure

How to use this document

• Use it to make sure no claim about the organization's AI capabilities, results or use is published without prior evidence, review and approval, and to keep that evidence in a file for each claim.
• Suggested owner: marketing, with legal as final approver; product and data provide the technical evidence.
• Before adopting it, decide: which materials fall under the procedure (website, ads, proposals, press releases, app store listings, investor presentations), who approves each risk level and how quickly a claim is revalidated when the model changes.
• Complete the bracketed fields: owners, thresholds, timelines and the tools where files are kept.
• Section 11 summarizes the criteria for the United States and the European Union; keep the markets where you advertise and delete the rest.
• Ask internal legal or an external advisor to review high-risk claims (section 5) and comparative claims before publication, and to validate the red list against the rules in each market.
• Approve the procedure in the [AI COMMITTEE], train marketing and sales, and start by reviewing claims that are already published.

AI Marketing Claims Substantiation Procedure

1. Purpose and scope

[ORGANIZATION NAME] establishes this procedure so that every advertising or commercial claim about artificial intelligence is truthful, is backed by reasonable evidence before publication and stays up to date while it remains in circulation.

It applies to any claim, express or implied, about:

• the use of AI in the organization's products or services ("AI-powered", "built with AI");
• features, capabilities, accuracy, speed, autonomy or results of an AI system;
• savings, return on investment or customer improvements attributed to AI;
• security, privacy, absence of bias, ethics or regulatory compliance of an AI system;
• comparisons with competitors or with traditional methods.

It covers all channels: website, ads, social media, emails, app store listings, press releases, case studies, sales decks and proposals, tender responses, demos, event materials and [OPTIONAL] investor communications.

2. Definitions

• AI claim: any message a reasonable recipient would understand as a statement of fact about AI.
• Implied claim: one that is not stated literally but follows from words, images, logos or context (for example, a customer logo next to "trusted by").
• Puffery: a subjective opinion no one would read as a measurable fact ("an amazing experience"). It needs no file, but it is checked to make sure it does not hide a measurable claim.
• Reasonable basis: objective evidence, existing before publication, that supports the meaning the recipient takes from the claim.
• Substantiation file: a folder with the claim, its interpretation, the evidence, the limitations and the approval (section 7).
• "AI washing": presenting as AI something that is not, or overstating what an AI system does.