Don't wait for Meta's new terms to decide what its AI can change
Black Friday is on 27 November. In the run-up, agencies running Meta campaigns say the platform's AI has been changing live ads that nobody asked it to touch. Separately, Meta has drafted terms that make the advertiser responsible for what its AI features produce, though whether that covers features an advertiser never switched on is unclear.
The CMA, the UK's competition regulator, says Meta has paused the rollout of those terms. The edits, by the agencies' account, have not stopped. So the question for anyone signing off Meta ads this month is simple: who has decided what the platform's AI is allowed to do to your client's work?
What agencies are finding in live ads
The digital agency Exverus told Adweek that Meta's AI has been adding sitelinks (extra links under an ad), translating copy, and building new images and carousels out of a brand's own photos, sometimes on ads where nobody had switched those features on. Even after several rounds of checks, it has had to pull live ads to strip out changes that slipped through.
Ryan Adams, its paid search and social specialist, said many of the options sit in hidden or collapsed menus: "If every one of those isn't manually unchecked, the enhancements still apply."
The online bookseller Bookshop.org had a similar experience, as Adweek reported. It said an automated account update opted it into Meta's new ad features, and an AI-generated illustration was added to an ad its own team had made, without its knowledge. It has since switched off all of Meta's AI ad features, Adweek says.
The cost lands on the brand. Asa Hiken, a senior analyst at Emarketer, told Adweek that people seeing the ad don't know Meta's ad policies, so they are likely to assume the brand chose to use AI.
What the terms say, and where they stand
Meta's updated Commercial Terms, the contract for businesses that use its products, add a section called "AI Features". It says these features "may make mistakes and may not always produce accurate, complete, or suitable results", and that the business is "solely responsible for and assume[s] any and all risks" that come with them and with whatever they produce.
Adweek reports that, under the earlier wording, advertisers were responsible for AI output only when they chose to use Meta's creative AI tools. Adweek reads the new section as covering features Meta switches on too. Meta's spokesperson did not directly say whether advertisers are liable for features they never turned on, so that remains an open question. The spokesperson described the update as folding existing AI ad terms into the main terms, and said advertisers can turn off individual Advantage+ features, Meta's automated ad tools, in Ads Manager at any time.
The dates have moved twice. Adweek reported a start of 30 October. Meta's own terms page still shows 20 November when we checked it on 4 November. But the CMA says that Meta announced on 28 October a pause to the rollout, pending a consultation with industry groups. The CMA opened an investigation on 30 October into whether Meta's terms breach competition law. Its release centres on terms that "could allow it to collect content from the websites of businesses and publishers that use its services" and use it for its own products, including its AI features. The release does not mention the AI Features section on who carries the risk.
We don't know whether, when or in what form the AI section will apply to any accounts, UK ones included.
Waiting for the contract is still a choice
It would be easy to wait and see until the lawyers and the regulator are done. We think that's the wrong call. Nobody has given a date for settling the contract, and the edits are happening in live campaigns now, during the weeks that matter most to retail clients.
Leaving the platform isn't realistic for many teams either, and agencies quoted by Adweek aren't advising it. David Dweck, president of the agency Go Fish Digital, told Adweek his agency has its legal team reviewing the terms but won't tell clients to pull back from Meta in the fourth quarter. "It's kind of the tax of advertising on Meta," he said.
There is a fair case for leaving some features on. Some may well help results, and a client chasing volume at Black Friday might accept a translated line or an extra link. At the other end, the programmatic team at AdCellerant told Adweek it switches Meta's default AI automation off across every campaign.
Both positions are defensible. A blanket "off" is a decision. Whatever the last account update happened to switch on isn't.
For agencies, this turns an AI edit nobody approved into an account-management problem as well as a creative one. If a client asks "did you put AI in our ad?", someone should be able to answer from a written record, with a date, and not from memory.
For in-house teams, the brand wears the result whoever made the change, so ask your agency what is switched on in your accounts.
What to ask for before Black Friday
- Ask your paid social team for a list of the AI features live on each Meta account, including the ones nobody remembers turning on.
- Agree with each client which of those stay on and which go off, with one line on why for each.
- Write the agreed settings and the date into the account notes or the statement of work. That's our suggestion for keeping a record, not legal advice.
- Ask for a re-check after every Meta account update, and once more in the week before Black Friday, covering live ads as well as account settings, since Exverus found changes slipping through on ads already running.
Where have you landed for your clients: Meta's AI features on by default, or off until someone approves them?
Jules, founder of WYNStrategy Director helping agencies and marketing teams use AI properly. More about Jules