Meta Bans Distribution of Political Content in Generative AI Advertising Tools

JAKARTA - Meta prohibits politicians from advertising through generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based advertising tools on its platform. This ban was conveyed yesterday by a spokesperson for the company.

Speaking to Reuters, the spokesperson said that this ban was imposed to cut off access to campaigns capable of increasing the spread of disinformation in any form.

It is not yet clear how Meta will implement this ban later. The reason is, Meta has not announced this policy openly and their AI does not seem to have special rules that can sort advertisements in the form of campaigns.

This AI-based advertising tool is actually only available to a few groups. Not many people can take advantage of this feature yet because Meta will roll it out to all advertisers globally next year.

Through this tool, advertisers are able to design their ads easily. They can create backgrounds, image adjustments, and even select text for ads just with AI.

In fact, AI-based ad creation is nothing new because Google has similar tools. Google also has the same rules as Meta, namely prohibiting politicians from advertising on its platform.

However, this prohibition is a little clear with the blocking rules that Google implements. Considering that Google cannot control all advertising directly, they restrict political-related keywords from being used.

However, this method may not necessarily work because there are many keywords related to politics and Google might miss out. This rule is still just a plan and has not been tested directly.

We don't yet know what steps Meta will implement to curb the spread of advertising related to political elements. One thing is certain, Meta strictly prohibits political content generated by all AI tools on their platform, even the Meta AI virtual assistant.