Why we disclose this
A buying guide is only worth as much as the trust placed in it. Anyone reading with us about a garden sauna is planning a purchase in the four-figure to five-figure range. With such weight, every reader has a right to know how the recommendations they read come about, what technology is behind them and who ultimately stands behind them.
Then there is the legal framework: the European AI regulation, known as the EU AI Act, requires transparency for AI-generated content from 2 August 2026. We implement this labelling, deliberately going further than the law in the narrower sense would require of us. The detailed look at the legal situation is further down this page.
Our stance on this is the same as on advertising: we would rather label once too often than once too little. How we handle affiliate links, ratings and price information is explained in detail in our editorial profile.
The texts: created with AI assistance, editorially reviewed
All buying guides, comparisons, advice articles and data checks on this site are created with AI assistance. Specifically, that means: we set the researched facts, product data and the editorial line, and an AI system takes care of the linguistic drafting. Afterwards every article goes through an editorial review before it goes online.
This review has several stages. First we check the hard facts: power ratings in kilowatts, dimensions, electrical connections, wood types and features must match the information given by manufacturers and retailers. Then comes the plausibility check of the assessments: does the recommendation fit the target group described, are the product's limits stated honestly, is an important safety note missing? Finally, we check compliance with our own rules, such as the ban on invented test results and the obligation to label every purchase link as advertising.
Seydhan Cakmak is responsible for all published content, named in the legal notice as the editor responsible under Section 18(2) of the Interstate Media Treaty. This responsibility is not a formality: it means that one person answers for every sentence on this site, regardless of which tool helped with the writing.
We make this visible in three places. Below the author line of every article there is a disclosure notice, the footer of every page links to this transparency page, and the transparency box at the end of every article summarises our way of working once more.
The images: what is real and what is not
Accuracy is especially important here, because a false label would be just as misleading as a missing one. That is why we clearly distinguish between three kinds of visual material on this site.
Product photos are real and not AI-generated. All images of infrared cabins, sauna heaters, barrel saunas and accessories come from the manufacturers themselves and are embedded through Amazon's official product interface. We do not create artificial product images, for good reason: an AI image could show a cabin that never existed, with fittings, emitters or proportions that differ from the product delivered. For purchases of this size, that would be a real problem.
The video in the page header is real footage. The clip on our homepage shows a real sauna and comes from filmmaker Yaroslav Shuraev, published under a free licence. The credit is visible at the bottom right of the video. The still image shown before playback is also a single frame from exactly this footage.
Our own illustrations are AI-created and labelled. These include the drawn sauna heater scene on the homepage, the small icons in the Sauna Finder and our site icon. They are vector graphics, that is, drawn depictions that never give the impression of a photograph. The large heater illustration carries a visible notice directly in the graphic, so the label is preserved even when someone shares a screenshot.
What the EU AI Act actually requires
Article 50 of the AI Act governs transparency obligations for AI-generated content and applies from 2 August 2026. For content published before that date, the regulation provides a transition period until 2 December 2026. The labelling obligation is aimed mainly at so-called deepfakes, that is, deceptively realistic depictions of real people, places or events, as well as AI-generated texts intended to inform the public.
For texts, the regulation contains an explicit exception: it does not apply if the AI-generated content is subject to human review or editorial control and a natural or legal person bears editorial responsibility. That is exactly the case with us, as described above. Under this framework, labelling our articles would not be strictly required.
We label them anyway, for two reasons. First, the scope of this exception is not yet fully settled in its details, and we think it unwise to resolve a question of interpretation at our readers' expense. Second, transparency simply suits a site that names price ranges instead of teaser prices and says openly when a product is unsuitable for a particular situation.
A note for context: this page describes our own way of working and reflects the legal position to the best of our knowledge. It is not legal advice. Under the regulation, machine-readable marking of AI outputs, for example through watermarks or metadata, is a duty of the providers of the AI systems, not of site operators like us.
What we fundamentally do not do
Transparency also means stating your own limits clearly. You will not find these four things on TopSaunaReviews, and the use of AI does not change that:
- No invented test results. We do not run a laboratory and do not claim measured values. Where we rate, it says editorial rating, and the basis is manufacturer and retailer information as well as documented user experiences.
- No artificial product images. Every product shown is displayed with the manufacturer's image, never with a generated depiction.
- No invented people or quotes. There are no made-up testers, no invented customer voices and no fictitious experts with fantasy names.
- No invented prices. We only give price ranges for orientation; you can check the current price in the linked shop.
The best way to see how these principles work in practice is to look at one of our comparisons, such as the one on infrared cabins for two people, or at a guide such as Infrared cabin or sauna, in which we say openly for whom the more expensive solution is not worth it.
Questions, corrections and feedback
No review process is perfect. If a statement seems outdated to you, a wording seems unclear or an assessment seems wrong, write to us via the contact page. We check every note and correct substantiated errors promptly. This explicitly applies to notes about the labelling itself: if you notice a graphic that you think is insufficiently labelled, please report it to us.
How we handle your data when you write to us or visit our site is set out in our privacy policy. Our interactive Sauna Finder, by the way, works entirely in your browser: it sends no answers to a server, sets no cookies and stores nothing.