Its new disclosure requirements for digitally altered political ads are now in effect, requiring all advertisers who want to run ads on social issues, elections, and politics to indicate when their ad "contains a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered by AI or other methods".
Meta first announced the new policy last November, hoping to get out in front of the now evident deluge of generative AI advertisements that will swamp the airwaves in the U.S. Election campaign.

Which is already happening. For example, there's been a recent advertisement by U.S. Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis featuring an AI-generated image of Donald Trump hugging Anthony Fauci, and a voice simulation of Trump in another ad.
Now, with the AI tools getting better at portraying things so realistically, Meta, and every other platform, is about to introduce new rules that disincentivize users from trying to dupe with digitally created or manipulated messaging.

Both YouTube and TikTok have also introduced tags for AI-generated content allowing viewers in-stream to be way more transparent and clear.
This is a significant upgrade that is only likely to become more relevant as AI tools are bound to continue evolving, and eventually they will be able to generate full video clips of unreal incidents.

Although there's some danger of last-minute false promotions from political advertisers, who risk bans from running them up until the election blackout, because who cares if you're banned after that fact, and the right AI-generated message can still sways voters in front of the polls.

It's why the blackout period is so important. According to previous elections, Meta will enforce a political ads blackout a week before the poll, which should be quite enough time to let any such claims or clips be debunked before people vote.

But it will certainly be one of the elements to watch this year.

Meta says that now all ads must check the box when an ad has been digitally altered, or face having them removed and/or banned. In addition, it says advertisers are now able to update their previously launched campaigns with its new AI disclosure tag.