Meta: Facebook parent Meta has new ‘AI rules’ for general elections next year

About three weeks after announcing that the company will not allow political advertisers to use its generative AI ads tools for campaigning during elections, Facebook parent company Meta has now provided more details about its policies on political ads. The news comes as multiple countries, including the US, India, Indonesia and Mexico will head to the polls next year.
Disclose of AI use in ads
Meta is making it mandatory for advertisers to disclose information when they have used artificial intelligence (AI) to alter images and videos in certain political ads.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said that this mandate applies if an ad contains a photorealistic image or video, or realistic-sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered to depict a real person as saying or doing something they did not say or do.
The second scenario where it is mandatory to announce the use of AI is “if an ad depicts a realistic-looking person that does not exist or a realistic-looking event that did not happen, alters footage of a real event, or depicts a realistic event that allegedly occurred, but that is not a true image, video, or audio recording of the event.”
Advertisers authorisation process
Meta is also making it necessary for advertisers who run political ads to complete an authorisation process and include a “paid for by” disclaimer. These ads will be stored in the company’s publicly available Ad Library for seven years. Clegg said that Meta has more than 15 million US entries in its Ad Library.
Why it is important for Meta
Meta has been under scrutiny, especially in the 2016 US elections, for failing to address the spread of misinformation on its apps, including Facebook and Instagram. The company has since been working on election-related policies.
The company said that it has taken action “if content violates our Community Standards, including our policies on election and voter interference, hate speech, coordinating harm and publicising crime, and bullying and harassment. We remove this content whether it was created by a person or AI.”