[tw04]

>Surely the ad needs to be a photo of the actual thing, rather than an approximation?

Have you ever seen an ad for a fastfood burger? Have you ever seen the real thing? The ad looks literally nothing like the real thing.

Off the top of my head: anything related to real estate, food, clothing - if the ad happens to reflect the actual product you lucked out.

[bawolff]

My understanding is there are literal laws that it has to be real (usually skirted around by taking 1000 samples and only pucking the best one)

[tw04]

Nope, by doing things like using Vaseline or inedible sprays to make it look fresh. In the case of ice cream, not using ice cream at all.

Either way, it would literally be impossible to get the food in the picture.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/02/fast-fo...

[shlant]

can you point to specific examples of these laws?

Maybe it's a hard thing to search for, but I mostly just found FTC guidelines which state "Your Ads Must Be Truthful and Accurate" but I can't find any more details. I think there's stuff like you can't misrepresent the dimensions of something or the color but I doubt there would be laws that don't effect photoshop but would apply to AI.

[bawolff]

Googling i found lots of people citing case law: in re Campbell Soup Co., 77 F.T.C. 664 (1970) but i did not find the actual text.