Meta bans political advertisers from using its generative AI ad tools

SAN FRANCISCO, California: This week, Facebook owner Meta said it would ban political campaigns and advertisers in regulated industries from using its new generative artificial intelligence (AI) advertising products, which lawmakers have warned could help spread election misinformation.

Meta, the world’s second-leading platform for digital ads, does not have any rules explicitly covering AI. However, its advertising standards prohibit ads with content debunked by the company’s fact-checking partners.

In a note appended to several pages explaining how the tools work, Meta said, “As we continue to test new Generative AI ads creation tools in Ads Manager, advertisers running campaigns that qualify as ads for Housing, Employment or Credit or Social Issues, Elections, or Politics, or related to Health, Pharmaceuticals or Financial Services are not currently permitted to use these Generative AI features.”

“We believe this approach will allow us to better understand potential risks and build the right safeguards for the use of Generative AI in ads that relate to potentially sensitive topics in regulated industries,” it added.

In October, Meta announced that it would expand advertisers’ access to AI-powered advertising tools, which can instantly create backgrounds, image adjustments, and variations of the ad copy with only simple text inputs.

Last week, Alphabet’s Google, the world’s biggest digital advertising company, announced the launch of similar image-customizing generative AI advertising tools.

A Google spokesperson said the company plans to keep politics out of its products by blocking a list of “political keywords” from being used as prompts.

TikTok does not allow political ads, while Snapchat blocks them in its AI chatbot and uses human review to fact-check all political ads, which includes vetting for misleading use of AI.

X, previously known as Twitter, has not launched a generative AI advertising tool.