Meta will prevent advertisers in other regulated industries and political campaigns from utilising its new generative AI advertising products, according to a company spokesman.
This means that they will not have access to resources that lawmakers have warned could accelerate the spread of false information ahead of elections, according to a report by Reuters.
Meta made the decision publicly known on 6 November through modifications to its support centre. Although, it does not have any limits directly on AI, its advertising standards forbid ads with content that has been refuted by the company's fact-checking partners.
"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 aren't currently permitted to use these Generative AI features," the company said in a note appended to several pages explaining how the tools work. The note was quoted by Reuters.
"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 said.
The policy change was made a month after Meta, the second-largest digital ad marketplace in the world, declared it would begin to give advertisers more access to AI-powered advertising tools. These tools allow advertisers to instantly create backgrounds, edit images, and change ad copy in response to simple text prompts.
Initially, the tools were restricted to a select few advertisers. The company stated at the time that they are on schedule to launch for all marketers worldwide by the following year.
Following the excitement surrounding the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot last year—which can respond to queries and other prompts with written responses that resemble those of a human—Meta and other tech companies have hurried to introduce generative AI ad solutions and virtual assistants in recent months.
