5 things businesses and marketers should know about Meta AI

If you’re running ads or content on Facebook or Instagram, you’ve likely already come across one of the newest additions to the world of AI.

Meta’s AI assistant was launched in Australia back in April, and whether you love it or hate it, it looks like it’s here to stay.  

But even if you’re not using it, Meta AI is using you and your business.

 

Now we have a broader view of how the AI is impacting brands in Australia (and with further data since the US launch last year), our team has curated the top 5 points of what business owners and marketers should know about Meta’s AI when it comes to running paid ads on Facebook.

1. You can’t turn it off

Some of the most asked questions about Meta’s AI are whether you can turn it off, or how to remove Meta AI from Facebook.

The downside is, you can’t.

And not just for yourself, but for your ideal clients and customers.

Regardless of how they use platforms like Facebook, users will be exposed to the AI in various forms, whether that’s additional knowledge, comment summaries, or AI chat.

 

While you don’t really need to keep this in mind when it comes to your clients or customers, it is important to remember that it is now part of their experience on the app.

As for yourself, there are some workarounds to make the AI less prevalent, particularly in your Messenger chat.

2. You can remove automated comment summaries

If you haven’t already come across this feature yourself, you might be in for a bit of fun next time to head to the comments section.

Meta’s AI is injecting itself into both the good and bad of Facebook comments, to give a summary about what people are saying about certain posts. Knowing the comments section of Facebook, this could get wild.

The downside is that Meta’s AI is picking out both the good AND bad, and not always doing so in a balanced way.

The AI has been known to pull out negative comments or reviews on ads and make them more prevalent. Even if most of the comments are positive.

Not great for your ad performance or bottom line.

Thankfully, Meta’s AI settings give an option to remove these summaries from individual ads and posts, or turn the feature off completely. 

3. It’s not always right

One of the major features of Meta’s AI is to explore more information on content you’re interested in, with the AI offering relevant subtopics or even giving the option to ask a question or verify information.

But it has recently been in hot water for legitimising incorrect information that led to a scam.

Controversy and lawsuits aside, it’s something to keep in mind if you’re using the AI to confirm information or ask questions yourself, particularly if you’ll use them to publicise your brand.

 

When in doubt use the old journalists trick of confirming your information with two sources before publishing.

4. Your public posts will be used for training

If you’ve been wondering if Meta AI can read content or images, the answer is yes.

At the end of the day, you are using Meta’s platforms, and they have access to your public content.

 

Both your business and personal (if you have a personal account) public posts will be used to train the AI to become more intelligent.

However, depending on your local data protection laws, you may be able to disallow this.

5. You can create content with Meta’s AI (but you need to label it)

Just like other AI tools, Meta allows you to create and edit images, reimagine existing images, give ideas for interesting posts, and even help write captions for ads or posts.

But when uploading or posting these to social media, it’s important to know what the policies of each platform are.

If you are using AI to create ad visuals or social content for your business, you will likely need to add a disclaimer, as per Meta’s own policies around AI-generated content.

 

Disclaimers are only necessary if you are copying and pasting content from AI, rather than using it for inspiration.

This feature is already easily available when uploading content but is important to think about if authenticity is a core pillar of your brand or messaging.

While Meta’s AI might not be impacting your ads or brand, it can be useful to know what is happening on a larger scale. As they say, knowledge is power. And knowledge will help you cross any difficult bridges that pop up in your advertising and content creation journey.