Meta Platforms will not permit use of AI ad tools by political advertisers

The US Presidential elections will take place next year on November 5, meaning there is now less than one year left for a major election process. Similarly, general elections in India will take place in April-May 2024, which is roughly about six months away. So, this is definitely a time when political promotions and campaigns are going to increase in frequency, and individual political leaders as well as parties will be working to improve their exposure to the public. While a good tool for them would be AI, it may not be the best situation for the voters, who are sure to be flooded with propaganda advertising. Realizing the situation, Meta has come out to declare that no political advertisers will be able to take advantage of its AI ads creation tool.

The information first came through a report by Reuters, which mentioned that the parent company of Facebook and Instagram is barring political campaigns and advertisers in other regulated industries from using its new generative AI advertising products. The decision was made to not help propagate election misinformation.

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Afterwards, Meta also updated its help center, and 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 aren't 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.

Meta to bar political advertisers from using AI ads tools

A month after Meta, the world's second-largest digital advertising platform, announced its plan to expand advertisers' access to AI-driven advertising tools, which can rapidly generate backgrounds, modify images, and create different ad copies based on simple text prompts, the company has updated its policy. Initially, these tools were accessible to a limited group of advertisers in the spring, but Meta aims to make them available to all advertisers worldwide by the next year.

In recent months, Meta and other tech companies have been in a race to introduce generative AI ad products and virtual assistants, responding to the excitement generated by the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot last year. This chatbot is capable of delivering human-like written responses to questions and prompts.

Notably, these companies have provided limited details about the safety measures they intend to implement for these systems, making Meta's decision on political advertising a pivotal and significant choice in the AI policy landscape.

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