With more people discovering new uses for generative AI, concerns about how it might be leveraged for unethical purposes are beginning to grow. As the 2024 US presidential election looms, digital platforms are looking at ways to protect users from exposure to misinformation. AI is undoubtedly making it harder to do, blurring the lines between fact and fiction across the internet. Now,Googlehas updated its political content policy to deliver more transparency in this area, and it will directly impact advertisers.
Beginning in mid-November,Google saysit will require advertisers to disclose when a political ad has altered content. This means that if an ad shows an inauthentic depiction of a person or an event, the advertiser must let viewers know that it’s fictitious. Additionally, Google notes that the disclosure notice must be obvious. These new changes will apply to all adds containing images, video, and audio content across Google products and services. However, it’s worth specifying that certain editing techniques, for example, may exempt an ad from the disclosure requirement. This is assuming that the alterations are “inconsequential,” as Google states.
As it becomes easier to deceive ad viewers through tools like AI, more people are demanding transparency from big tech companies, including Google. In August, the company announced that it was going toexpand its Ads Transparency Center, which is its global repository of advertisers. The move was made in response to new regulations developed by the European Union, aimed at providing citizens with more insight into how advertisers are targeting them. Those in the EU will be able to derive additional information from Google to better understand why they are seeing particular ads.
In the US, you may already gain information on targeted ads through the Ads Transparency Center. Here, you can find out where an advertiser has displayed an ad, when it was previously run, and additional insight to better understand why you were targeted.
Whether these moves by Google will definitively curb misperception has yet to be seen. In the least, the company may benefit from the public simply seeing these changes and assuming Google has their best interests in mind. The 2024 US election, however, could serve as an indicative barometer for the tech giant and industry as a whole.
