AEO-REX Birmingham
Publication & transparency review

Most of what you've been told about AI law doesn't apply to you.

There is no UK AI Act and no general duty to declare AI use on a website. If someone has told you otherwise, they were selling you something. What does apply is narrower, duller and genuinely worth fixing — and it happens to be the same work that gets you named by ChatGPT.

This review compares what your website publishes against what your regulator requires it to publish, fixes the technical layer, and flags anything else for your compliance officer. Twelve points, one afternoon of my time, and no scaremongering.

Book the review — £450 → Free inside any AI Visibility Audit implementation.

What actually applies to a UK practice

The UK regulates AI through the rules it already had, enforced by the regulators you already answer to. Nothing here is new legislation aimed at you; all of it is checkable today.

Data protection
Your privacy notice has to mention AI

If AI touches personal data anywhere in your business — triaging enquiries, drafting correspondence, transcribing consultations — UK GDPR transparency duties require your notice to say so and explain how. Most practice privacy notices predate the tools they now use.

Since 5 Feb 2026
Automated decisions about people

Articles 22A–22D of the UK GDPR, inserted by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, govern significant decisions made solely by automation, with safeguards including information, human intervention and a right to contest. Relevant if you screen enquiries, applicants or claims automatically.

Coming
The ICO's statutory AI code

Since May 2026 the ICO has had a statutory duty to produce a binding Code of Practice on AI and automated decision-making. Final ADM guidance is expected over summer 2026 and the Code is likely to follow in 2027. When it lands it will be cited directly in enforcement — worth being ahead of, not panicked by.

Chatbots
People should know it's a machine

The ICO's expectation is that this is obvious from the interface, not buried in a privacy policy. A customer-service chatbot also engages consumer protection law on the answers it gives, and your sector rules where a regulated service is being discussed.

Your regulator
What you must publish, published properly

SRA transparency rules on price and complaints information. SRA publicity rules requiring accuracy. GDC, CQC and MHRA restrictions on health claims and prescription-only treatments. FCA financial promotion rules. The CAP Code over all of it, plus the ban on fake or incentivised reviews.

The live one
What AI is already saying about you

Research published in July 2026 found AI chatbots returning false information about roughly half of London's small businesses — wrong hours, wrong services, out-of-date prices. In a regulated practice, publicity accuracy is a regulatory expectation, and the engines are now a publication channel you do not control but can influence.

The EU AI Act: real, imminent, and probably not yours

The transparency duties in Article 50 apply from 2 August 2026, with machine-readable marking of synthetic content following on 2 December 2026. Penalties reach €15 million or 3% of worldwide turnover. It reaches UK businesses — but it follows the users and the content, not your postcode.

The four duties are specific: systems that interact with people must make clear they are machines; generative outputs must be marked as artificially generated; people exposed to emotion-recognition or biometric categorisation must be told; and deepfakes, plus AI text published to inform the public on matters of public interest, must be disclosed.

Why I'm telling you it probably doesn't apply

Because a Birmingham practice with UK-only clients and no AI assistant is very unlikely to be in scope, and I would rather be the person who told you that than the one who sold you a compliance package on the strength of a headline. If you are in scope, you'll want to know before Sunday.

Three-question scope triage
1 · Does anything you run put AI in front of a person in the EU?

A chatbot, an AI phone assistant, an automated triage form on a page EU clients use. If yes, the chatbot disclosure duty is engaged.

2 · Do you publish AI-generated images, audio or video to EU audiences?

Marketing campaigns count. Synthetic media depicting real people carries the deepfake disclosure duty on top.

3 · Do you publish AI-written text on matters of public interest?

Narrower than it sounds, and there is a carve-out where a human has reviewed the text and someone holds editorial responsibility for it — which is how your content should be produced anyway.

Three noes means the Act is almost certainly not your problem this year. The review records the answer and the reasoning, dated, so you have something to show if anyone asks.
Why I sell this at all

The work that makes you compliant is the work that makes you citable.

An AI engine will not confidently recommend a practice whose prices it cannot find, whose practitioners it cannot verify, whose regulated status is locked inside a footer image, and whose details contradict the public register. Those are the same four things your regulator wants published clearly. Seven of the twelve points below raise your visibility score as a side effect.

Published prices satisfy SRA transparency — and give the engines something to quote.
Named, credentialled practitioners satisfy publicity accuracy — and correlate with four times more citations.
Details matching the register satisfy your regulator — and let an engine resolve you as one entity.

The twelve points

Every one is verifiable on a public website, fixable technically, and evidenced with a screenshot in your report. Points marked also raise your AI visibility score.

01Regulated identity in text — SRA, GDC or FCA number as crawlable text, matched to the public register.
02Price transparency — published price or fee basis where required, in a form an engine can quote.
03Complaints route — published, findable and accurate.
04Named authorship — real practitioners with qualifications and registration, not “the team”.
05Claim audit — superlatives, guarantees and health claims checked against the CAP Code and your sector rules.
06Review integrity — no incentivised or fabricated reviews; counts and ratings stated accurately.
07Entity consistency — name, address, phone and registration reconciled across site, Companies House, register and directories.
08Privacy notice covers AI — where AI processes personal data, the notice says so and explains how.
09Chatbot disclosure — obvious from the interface, per ICO expectations and EU Article 50 where relevant.
10EU exposure triage — the three questions above, answered and recorded rather than assumed.
11Cookies and consent — a PECR-compliant banner whose actual behaviour matches the stated policy.
12What AI says about you — screenshots of every material factual error the engines state, with the source corrected.

Price

Publication & Transparency Review
All twelve points, evidenced, one-off
£450
Bundled with the AI Visibility Audit
Both reviews together, credited against implementation
£895
The fixes themselves
Publishing it all properly is the four-week build
from £2,400
Annual re-check
Rules change; so do your fees
in Watchdog
Book the review →
What this is not

This review is a technical and editorial comparison of published website content against publicly available regulatory requirements. It is not legal, regulatory or compliance advice, and AEO-REX is not a regulated adviser.

Findings are provided for your compliance officer or solicitor to consider. You remain responsible for the content published on your website, and everything I draft goes to you for approval before it goes live.

I don't issue certificates, badges or “compliant” marks, and I'd be wary of anyone who does.

Questions

Is there a law requiring me to declare AI use on my website?

In the UK, no. There is no UK AI Act and no general labelling duty. The nearest real obligations are that your privacy notice explains AI processing of personal data, and that a chatbot is obviously a machine. Anyone telling you there is a blanket duty is selling fear.

Am I in scope for the EU AI Act?

Only if your AI reaches people in the EU. Article 50 duties apply from 2 August 2026 and follow the users and the content, not where you're based. The three-question triage above settles it in a couple of minutes, and I record the answer with reasons.

Do you give legal advice?

No. I'm not a solicitor or a regulated adviser and I don't pretend to be. I check what your website publishes against what your regulator requires, fix the technical layer, and flag the rest for the person qualified to advise you.

Why would a marketing consultant do compliance work?

Because it's the same work. Clear prices, verifiable credentials, accurate service descriptions and honest reviews are what regulators require you to publish and what AI engines need in order to name you. I do it once and you get both.

What if you find something serious?

I tell you plainly, in writing, with the evidence and the relevant published requirement — and I recommend you take it to your compliance officer or solicitor before we touch anything. I'd rather lose a fix than have you publish something on my say-so.

Can I just have the checklist?

Yes — the twelve points are published above precisely so you can run them yourself. If you'd rather do it in-house, do. The paid version is me doing it, evidencing it, and fixing the technical half.