Jeff HassemerCEO, FirestarterMarketing.ai · The Strategy Architect | Agency Accelerator | Architecting Bold Strategies | AI + Marketing That Scales | Founder @ FireStarterMarketing.AI

New AI Rules Small Biz Must Know #substack #shorts

7 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this short commentary, Jeff Hassemer highlights the accelerating impact of AI regulations on small and local businesses. He notes that while enterprises have long been aware of AI policy, recent developments have brought compliance pressures to the small‑business arena. He outlines several key regulatory milestones: the European Union's new AI content disclosure rule, Colorado's AI Act effective February, Illinois' amendment to the Human Rights Act on Jan 1, and an estimated $16,000 compliance cost for California small businesses. Hassemer emphasizes that the most critical practical step for businesses using AI is to clearly disclose AI usage to customers and regulators.

Chapters

And so we certainly have known this in the enterprise space and the mid-market space for years, but it's really interesting to see how fast this has hit the small business and local business space as well. Yeah, it's coming hard. We, you know, I think we predicted this back in April and said it was going to happen in the fall. Here we are late summer and it's happening, right? Absolutely. So finally, As we talk about every week, AI is now being regulated. The European Union had their big regulation happen this week, which basically means if you are generating AI content, you need to clearly state that if you're doing business in the EU. Colorado's AI Act took effect in February. Illinois amended the Human Rights Act on January 1st. There are the, you know, the estimated California compliance cost for small businesses is $16,000 and needs to go in. So you need to know what's going on with the AI laws. And if, especially if you use that within your business, how to make it play. The main thing is you need to be, when you use AI, you need to be disclosing that you're using AI. That's kind of the big thing that goes on. But I don't know.