Russian lawmakers are preparing a radical change to the rules of the game for the artificial intelligence market. A new bill submitted to the State Duma proposes shifting responsibility for labeling AI-generated content from end users to the neural networks themselves and the platforms that provide access to them.
The Essence of the New Initiative
According to the proposal, the obligation to mark materials created with the help of AI will fall on the "entity providing the ability to use large foundational models." This fundamentally changes the logic of current regulation. The law supporting AI technologies, adopted at the end of July, contained only a soft provision: model owners were required to give users the option to label generated content, but solely on a voluntary basis.
The new initiative turns this option into a strictly mandatory procedure. The bill's authors insist that the measure is necessary to protect citizens from disinformation and deepfakes, which are increasingly penetrating not only the entertainment segment but also illegal activities.
Global Experience and Russian Realities
Russia's reference point is the Chinese model of two-tier labeling. China already has a system in place that includes explicit visual or audio marks for humans and implicit ones embedded in file metadata. However, transferring this experience to Russian soil raises questions for businesses.
The key issue is the wording about content "modified using AI." Lawyers note the ambiguity: whether fully generated materials fall under the rule or also ordinary edits that creators use to make their work easier. This legal uncertainty is already generating disputes, especially in e-commerce, where discrepancies between an AI-generated product image and the actual purchase are interpreted as a violation of consumer rights.
The Risk of a "Gray Market"
Market participants warn of a serious imbalance. Domestic neural networks will fall under strict regulation, while foreign platforms may simply ignore the requirements. According to expert estimates, this will create a "gray market": authors on Russian services will add labels, while users of foreign platforms will not. Forcing the latter to comply with the rules is practically impossible.
Meanwhile, businesses have already deeply integrated AI into their processes. Neural networks are used everywhere—from optimizing marketplaces to generating creative concepts, where the result often surpasses human output in unpredictability.
My View on the Situation
The initiative is logical from a consumer protection standpoint, but technically it is ahead of its time. As I have repeatedly noted in my analyses, reliably preserving a machine-readable label through further file manipulations is a challenge that the global community has not yet solved. Without clear standards and international coordination, the law risks becoming a tool of selective enforcement, hitting domestic developers first. Transparency of content origin is a trend that will strengthen trust in brands, but only if the rules are equally binding for all market players.