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The Story: On Wednesday, Meta announced that it will now require all advertisers on its platform to disclose when they use artificial intelligence to create or edit political ads.

The new Facebook and Instagram policy, which will begin next year before the 2024 election cycle kicks off, is concerned with how AI, misinformation, and deepfake technology can and will influence upcoming political races.

Unless they notify users, advertisers will no longer be able to digitally produce or tweak political ads that show real people saying or doing things they did not actually say or do.

The content Meta wants to target most with this protocol is misinformation spread by AI, which is quickly becoming indistinguishable from real life events.

Last month, Meta announced new generative AI tools that advertisers can use on their platforms to create better ads. Political advertisers, however, have been banned from using the new tech.

And Meta isn’t the first Big Tech platform to implement this policy. In September, Google shared that it would be the first platform to require advertisers on its platform to “prominently disclose when their ads contain synthetic content that inauthentically depicts real or realistic-looking people or events.”

Meta has not yet announced the penalties advertisers could face if they break the new rules, but it appears the tech company doesn’t plan to be overly punitive. According to Meta, rule violators will get multiple strikes before being penalized, and will not receive a strike if the content that was altered was something insignificant, like a cropped image.

We’ve asked multiple guests on Venture Daily if social media companies have a responsibility to flag political content on their platforms that is altered by AI. It appears Meta believes it does have that responsibility.

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