Meta has dedicated a lot of effort to handling political advertising on Facebook and Instagram over the years. They have implemented systems and created policies to determine which types of political ads can and cannot be used on their platforms.
However, with the rise of consumer artificial intelligence, Meta has introduced a new policy to address the impact of A.I. on political advertising. The company announced that starting next year, political advertisers worldwide will be required to disclose the use of third-party A.I. software in political or social issue ads that depict people and events synthetically.
Meta has also stated that advertisers will not be allowed to use their own A.I.-assisted software to create political or social issue ads, as well as ads related to housing, employment, credit, health, pharmaceuticals, or financial services. Advertisers may use third-party A.I. tools, such as DALL-E and Midjourney, but they must include disclosures.
The company believes that this approach will help them understand potential risks and establish appropriate safeguards for the use of generative A.I. in ads related to sensitive topics in regulated industries.
Meta is grappling with the widespread adoption of A.I. tools in the past year. As consumers have embraced products like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Midjourney, big tech companies like Meta have had to reconsider how to handle a new era of manipulated or false imagery, video, and audio.
Political advertising has been a contentious issue for Meta, particularly after the 2016 controversy involving Russian ads on Facebook. Since then, Mark Zuckerberg has invested considerable resources in combating disinformation and misinformation on Meta’s platforms. However, Meta has also allowed politicians to include false information in ads, citing free speech and public discourse. The company has been hesitant to restrict the speech of elected officials and has called for regulatory guidance on these matters.
Currently, political ad vendors on Meta must complete an authorization process and include a “paid for by” disclaimer on the ads, which are stored in the company’s public Ad Library for seven years.
Under Meta’s new A.I. policy, political campaigns and marketers will be required to disclose the use of A.I. tools to alter ads. The company will not require disclosure of insignificant alterations such as photo retouching and image cropping.
Meta has announced that political and social issue ads that appear to have used A.I. to manipulate images, video, and audio without disclosure will be rejected. Repeat attempts to submit such ads without disclosures will result in penalties, the details of which have not been specified. The company has always had third-party fact-checking partners review and potentially remove ads spreading misinformation.
By prohibiting the use of Meta’s own A.I.-assisted software for political or social issue ads, the company may prevent complications or legal issues related to its advertising technology. In 2019, the Justice Department sued the company for allowing advertisers to discriminate against Facebook users based on their characteristics, resulting in a settlement and changes to the ad technology.
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