Google will let advertisers use AI to create ad campaigns

Google has no intention of jumping off the AI train now.

The Financial Times reported on Thursday that Google plans on incorporating the same AI tech powering the Bard chatbot into its advertising tools. This is according to an internal Google presentation for ad buyers cited in the Financial Times report.

Per the presentation, the way it works is that the company buying ads will feed text, images, and video into the AI system. After that, the AI will put it all together into something resembling a real ad campaign made by marketing professionals. Or, at least, that’s the idea. None of this has gone public yet, so we don’t know exactly how effective it is.

The Times also reported that there are concerns about ads spreading misinformation this way. Bard famously got basic information wrong in its own announcement, and some Google employees have had ethical concerns about the chatbot since before it launched. For what it’s worth, Google apparently will have defenses in place to make sure these AI-generated ad campaigns don’t do anything weird.

But with the way this AI stuff is going, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before something very weird happens.