Meta will apply the ban on using its AI tools for election announcements in all countries without exception

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Meta announced that its advertising tools using generative artificial intelligence (AI) could not be used to power political campaigns, and this worldwide, their access being blocked for ads targeting specific services and issues.

The social media giant said earlier this month that advertisers would not be able to use the generative AI tools of its ad manager to produce political ads or about elections, housing, jobs, credits or social issues. Advertisements related to health, pharmaceutical products and financial services are also affected.

This policy will apply globally, as Meta continues to test its generative AI ad creation tools, confirmed Dan Neary, Meta vice president for Asia-Pacific. “This approach will allow us to better understand the potential risks and to put in place the appropriate protective measures for the use of generative AI in advertisements related to potentially sensitive topics in regulated sectors,” he specifies.

A launch pad for the distribution of ads

This measure comes at a time when several important elections will take place next year – in particular presidential elections in the United States, Finland, Pakistan and Taiwan.

Facebook Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads – has made AI a top priority and plans to add generative AI capabilities to all of these platforms.

Its advertising manager is presented as a launching pad for the distribution of ads on platforms. It offers an “all-in-one tool” to create, manage and track advertisements. A sandbox was introduced in May to test Meta’s new generative AI tools for advertisers. Among them we find background generation, text variants and image cropping. With text variants, for example, advertisers can generate several versions of text to reach different audiences.

More than half of advertisers use AI tools

The company also unveiled an AI-powered chatbot, Meta AI. It includes an AI image generation tool called Emu. These images can then be used on WhatsApp and Instagram.

Asked about the adoption rate of its AI products, Dan Neary explains that more than half of advertisers use the company’s Advantage+ tools to optimize the images and text of their advertising creations. These tools have helped advertisers achieve a turnover of $10 billion thanks to Advantage+ purchase campaigns, he added, citing the figures communicated by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Meta, during the recent publication of the company’s results. The number of advertisers using Advantage+ shopping campaigns every week has increased threefold compared to six months ago.

Facebook Instagrammer further emphasizing the role of AI, the Vice president notes that 20% of the content of Facebook and Instagram news feeds is now recommended by AI.

Display more relevant content

Concerted efforts were made more than a year ago to display more relevant content powered by recommendation engines, rather than content organized around people followed by Meta users. AI also makes it possible to achieve better results for marketers, thanks to tools such as the Advantage+ suite, which automates their tasks, says Dan Neary.

“We believe that every connection is an opportunity for companies and we see it on all our platforms,” he says. Some 3.96 billion people use at least one of Meta’s services every month, of which 3.14 billion daily. About 40% of users reside in Asia-Pacific, where mobile consumption is high, especially for messaging services.

When asked about how the data from its products and services are integrated and used to train its generative AI tools, Dan Neary explains that various sources are exploited: “Generative AI models require a large amount of data to be trained effectively, which is why a combination of sources is used for training, including publicly available information online, licensed data and information from Meta’s products and services. »

“Getting it right”

When it comes to publicly available information online, the datasets are filtered to exclude “certain websites that generally share personal information,” emphasizes Dan Neary. Facebook Instagram and Facebook publicly shared messages, including photos and text, are part of the data used to train the generative AI models that power the features announced earlier this year.

“We didn’t train these models using people’s private messages. We also do not use the content of private messages that you send to your friends and family to train our AI tools,” he reassures. “However, we can use the data from your use of the stickers created by AI, for example the search for a sticker to use in a chat, to improve our AI sticker templates. »

Regarding how Meta is responding to growing concerns about the security of AI and the use of personal data, Dan Neary indicates that a specialized interdisciplinary team is responsible for ensuring that its technology is designed and used responsibly. The team also collects comments from external experts and regulators, he says.

Generative AI is still in its infancy, he said that Meta is now striving to collaborate with the main stakeholders in the sector in order to “get it right”.

Source: ZDNet.com