Blog: AI Ads are Out of Control.

This is not a new observation, but I need to rant about it.

Imagine you’re running errands, driving, working out, showering, doing chores, or doing something else. You’re listening to a YouTube video or podcast, and suddenly some ad comes on. Just listening to it, it’s clear that it’s AI generated, and when you’re able to finally see it as you try to turn it off, it’s the most obvious AI-slop you’ve ever seen. Everyone hates these ads and most would consider them more annoying than the standard ads, yet they keep popping up everywhere.

At this point, the AI advertisements have become an epidemic in our society. No one asked for them, but since it’s much cheaper to generate ads using AI than it is to build sets, hire actors, write scripts, etc. they’re everywhere. From a financial standpoint, they’re understandable, but from an ethical standpoint, they raise a lot of questions.

The first ethical issue with a lot of these AI ads is the fact that a lot of them use animation styles that we know from various animation studios. This makes sense given how AI is trained on existing human work, but it does raise an ethical and legal concern about using these pre-existing animation styles. A lot of AI ads use an animation style that often looks exactly like that of Pixar studios, which makes me wonder where the legal lines are drawn. Sure, they may not be using Disney or Pixar characters, but with how similar the animation is, I have to wonder how long it will be before Pixar copyrights that style. Where’s the line between fair use, derivative content, and copyright infringement?

The second ethical issue I have with AI ads is false advertising. Sure, false advertising is something that’s a problem even with actual humans being involved in the advertisement, but it’s been made much easier with AI. How do I know that the whole gameplay in the ad isn’t as AI generated as the voice over? And once again, where are the legal lines drawn here? How much AI in an ad is considered too much?

Then there’s my third issue with these ads: how ridiculously sexualized they are. If it’s not AI ads for weight loss apps or various mobile games, I sometimes get ads for what’s essentially AI Webtoons, and all of them are highly sexualized. Some of them have been so bad that they should be considered soft-core porn. While I realize that humans have been doing this for years, AI has made it even easier to put out these types of advertisements. To make it more disturbing, too, is the fact that I got more of these types of ads before my Google account figured out that I’m legally an adult. Why is it that I could get these ads when I was still a kid, but not similarly inappropriate ads that have real humans in them? What is YouTube doing?

With how bad these advertisements are and how many moral and ethical lines are crossed with them, there needs to be heavy legislation put in place on what AI can be used for in ads and how it can be used. I think that ads that are more than 20% AI should not be allowed to be made, should not be allowed to use animation styles that are obviously taken from actual animation companies, should contain watermarks if they look hyper realistic, and there need to be tighter controls on sexual content or themes in these ads.

Until next time,

M.J.