Do this today: Go through your recent social media posts, email campaigns, and ads. If any of that content was written or generated with AI assistance, add a simple, visible disclosure. Something like “Created with AI assistance” placed clearly near the content is enough to get you started. Do not wait for a lawyer to tell you how to word it perfectly. The FTC’s new guidance has a 90-day window, and the businesses that scramble at day 89 are the ones that make mistakes.
The Federal Trade Commission just released updated guidelines requiring small businesses that use AI-generated content in advertising to disclose it clearly. The rules apply in 90 days, and the FTC has included a simplified compliance checklist specifically for businesses with fewer than 50 employees. That detail matters — it means they are watching this space and they expect small businesses to comply, not just large brands.
We have seen this pattern before at On Your Side Technologies. When the CAN-SPAM rules came out for email marketing, most small businesses ignored the requirements until they got a complaint or a fine. When ADA web accessibility guidelines started being enforced through litigation, small nonprofits were caught completely off guard. Regulatory guidance that looks like a big-company problem almost always rolls downhill.
Dr. Melody White has spent 30 years watching compliance requirements quietly become small business problems. Her observation: the businesses that build the habit early spend almost nothing adapting. The ones that wait spend real money catching up, and sometimes they spend it in legal fees instead of software.
Now here is the piece that makes this week’s news interesting when you put it all together. OpenAI just launched a low-cost GPT-5 Mini tier aimed directly at small businesses, starting under $20 a month, with templates built for customer service, marketing copy, and grant writing. Canva rolled out a free AI video generator for small business accounts. QuickBooks just added a conversational AI assistant inside QuickBooks Online that handles expense categorization and flags tax deductions in plain language.
More of you are going to be using AI-generated content in the next 90 days than were using it 90 days ago. These tools are genuinely useful and now genuinely affordable. That is good news. The FTC timing is not a coincidence — the regulators see the same trend you do.
The practical answer is not to stop using these tools. It is to use them with a simple disclosure habit baked in. Set up a one-line template in whatever tool you use to publish content. Make it automatic, not a decision you make each time.
If you are a nonprofit, there is one more thing worth checking right now: Google expanded its Google for Nonprofits program to include full access to Gemini AI features at no cost for qualifying organizations. AI-assisted email drafting, donor communication tools, and automated reporting inside Google Sheets are all included. If your organization qualifies and you have not applied, you are leaving a real tool on the table.
If you want help sorting out which of these tools actually fits what your organization does — and how to set up a simple process that keeps you on the right side of the FTC guidelines — that is exactly the kind of practical IT consulting we do. Reach out to us at On Your Side Technologies and we will help you figure out what makes sense for your situation, not a generic answer from a checklist.
Want to talk it through? We keep a few virtual coffee spots open each month — grab one while they’re available: Book a virtual coffee with Dr. White
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
