Meta to mandate disclosure of AI use in political ads on Facebook and Instagram by 2024

The policy update is being implemented because Meta has chosen to limit the use of generative AI advertising tools by political advertisers.

Meta Platforms, has revealed that from 2024 onwards, advertisers on these platforms will need to disclose if they have used artificial intelligence (AI) or other digital techniques to modify or produce political, social, or election-related ads.This decision is intended to tackle worries about the possible abuse of artificial intelligence in generating deceptive content, especially in the realm of political campaigns.

According to Meta's blog post, advertisers will need to disclose if their modified or created ads depict real individuals saying or doing something they didn't, or if they feature digitally generated realistic-looking individuals who don't actually exist. Additionally, advertisers must reveal whether their ads portray events that never occurred, manipulate footage of real events, or depict actual events without using the authentic image, video, or audio recordings of those events.

The policy update is being implemented because Meta has chosen to limit the use of generative AI advertising tools by political advertisers. Meta is actively working to tackle the increasing utilization of generative AI tools, which enable the creation of realistic deepfakes in a convenient and cost-effective manner.There are concerns regarding the potential influence of these deepfakes on elections.

In comparison, Alphabet's Google has also introduced image-customising generative AI ads tools, with a focus on keeping politics out of its products by blocking a list of "political keywords" from being used as prompts.

The new policy by Meta does not require disclosures for digital content changes that are considered unimportant or irrelevant to the message, statement, or topic presented in the advertisement. This includes actions like resizing images, cropping, correcting colors, or sharpening images. The policy aims to find a middle ground by addressing worries about false information while still allowing legitimate uses of digital editing methods in advertising.