Meta's AI alters ad creative

Meta’s ad system is now changing some marketers’ images and copy with artificial intelligence, and several advertisers told Marketing Brew they struggled to shut those changes off. (marketingbrew.com) Marketing Brew reported on April 21 that Snag Tights began seeing “off” creative on Meta last summer, then posted in February that odd-looking ads were not the brand’s own work. Chief executive Brie Read said the company later asked Meta to disable AI testing on its account. (marketingbrew.com) Meta spokesperson Simone Levien said advertisers “can opt out of AI creative testing at any time” in ad account settings, and said those tests run on a small share of impressions. Meta declined to comment on the specific advertiser examples in the story. (marketingbrew.com) The underlying system is older than the current generative AI wave. Meta’s Advantage+ creative tools automatically build multiple versions of a single ad and show different text combinations, media enhancements, and layout changes to different people. (facebook.com) Those automatic changes can include brighter or higher-contrast images, artistic filters, cropped aspect ratios, feed templates, added labels, swapped text placements, and business metadata pulled into the ad. Meta says those adjustments are meant to improve performance. (facebook.com) Meta has also layered generative AI into ad creation itself. Its business help pages say the company’s Ad Creative Generative AI Terms, launched on May 6, 2024, apply to text generation, text improvements, background generation, expand image, and future generative AI features. (facebook.com) Meta began labeling ads made or significantly edited with its in-house generative AI creative features in 2024, and a company policy post from February 3, 2025 said that rollout would continue through 2025. Depending on the edit, the “AI info” notice appears either in the three-dot menu or next to the Sponsored label. (about.fb.com) Meta’s public help pages also say not every AI-assisted ad will show that notice. Ads with minor changes, such as resizing or color correction, may not get an AI label, and ads altered with third-party AI tools are handled differently. (meta.com) That leaves advertisers with two separate questions: what Meta changed before an ad ran, and which version any customer actually saw. Meta says its labeling approach “will continue to evolve,” while marketers are asking for clearer records of AI assistance, generated variants, and final served creative. (meta.com)