Meta's AI tools are going rogue and churning out some very strange ads

"This is what Meta's AI did to my top ad," the head of marketing for clothing brand True Classic wrote on X.X/ScreenshotMeta's generative AI ads system is having some … senior moments.Advertisers have noticed the platform conjuring up bizarre ads, such as an AI granny.The phenomenon has persisted even after brands switched off some AI-related settings.Marketers are finding out the hard way that Meta's AI tools can churn out some very strange ads.Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year that the company's artificial intelligence had become so advanced that advertisers would no longer need to create their own ads. Brands could simply hand over their bank accounts and campaign objectives and let the AI take the wheel.Some marketers, however, haven't been pleased with the results when they let Meta's AI drive their ad campaigns.Bryan Cano, head of marketing of the "elevated basics" clothing brand True Classic, was aghast when he noticed Meta had switched out his top-performing ad — an attractive millennial man in a matching fleece set, casually posing on a stool — with an AI-generated photo of a cheerful yet unnatural granny sitting in an armchair. True Classic typically targets its Meta ads to men ages 30 to 45.The ad ran on Meta for three days before customers alerted True Classic to it, Cano told Business Insider. He said that while the direction Meta is taking with AI makes sense, he felt the generative-ads tool wasn't yet ready for prime time."This doesn't just affect our relationship with customers, who were upset by this, but it could also damage relationships with wholesale customers and the relationships we have built with retailers," Cano said.How do we go from this… to AI grandma. pic.twitter.com/n3cryUpLaT— Bryan Cano (@BryanECano) October 24, 2025 Tech companies, including Meta, Google, Amazon, and TikTok, have heralded AI as a way for advertisers to speed up ad creation and enhance the performance of their campaigns. However, many advertisers are wary of ceding too much control to black box systems, particularly since consumers often have an aversion to ads that are obviously generated by AI. The AI granny is a comical example of what can happen when algorithms go unchecked.True Classic isn't the only brand to have a chaotic Meta ad experience recently, thanks to AI.European footwear brand Kirruna noticed Meta's AI had whipped up an ad featuring a model whose leg had twisted around completely the wrong way.That looks painful.Courtesy of Pieter Van der AuweraElsewhere, Meta generated an ad for the e-bike company Lectric, asking "What are the easiest eBikes to put in my trunk," which featured the trunk of a car. So far, so normal — except the car also appeared to be flying through clouds. Logan Young, Lectric's VP of digital marketing, said the company managed to catch the ad before it ran."We turn it all off, pretty much," Young said of Meta's AI-generated ad enhancements.Lectric decided not to run these AI-generated ads.Courtesy of Logan YoungSurreptitious settingsSo, what's going on here?Advertisers told Business Insider that the cause of the uncanny valley Meta ads seemed to be two tickbox settings within their accounts — "test new creative features" and "automatic adjustments" — and another group of "Advantage+ creative" settings in the area where advertisers build their campaigns. Advantage+ is the brand name for Meta's suite of AI-powered ad products.Three advertisers also said they'd encountered a problem where Meta automatically switched those toggles to "on," even when they'd explicitly turned them off — meaning they inadvertently spent their budgets on AI-generated ads they didn't intend to run.Rok Hladnik, CEO of the marketing agency Flat Circle, which manages around $100 million in annual Meta ad spending for numerous direct-to-consumer brands, said he has encountered similar issues with Meta auto-generating bizarre ads. His company is now setting aside time two to three mornings a week to manually check that AI enhancements are switched off. The task takes up to an hour per account, he said."It randomly turns on, even for ads you've turned off for a second time," Hladnik said. "It's a complete mess."Jonas Vonk, founder of the e-commerce business Yuzu Knives, said he became so frustrated by how toggles like the AI-creative feature can be hidden within Meta's settings that he created his own startup, AdsFlow, which helps surface them more clearly for ad buyers."You really have to dig for them, and switch them all off every time you run an ad," Vonk said of Meta's ad settings.A Meta spokesperson said in a statement that millions of advertisers are finding value and improved performance by using its Advantage+ creative tools."Advertisers who use our full image generation feature have the opportunity to review the generated images before running their ad. We are continuously improving our products and features based on advertiser feedback," the Meta spokesperson said.Cano of True Classic said the AI granny ad hadn't surfaced as one of the selected ads in its campaign preview, which is why the brand was caught off guard.Pieter Van der Auwera, a marketing consultant who runs Meta ads for the Kirruna shoe brand, said the company has had to issue two refunds to customers who complained that the items they received weren't made of the material depicted in ads generated by Meta's AI. (Remarkably, the ad featuring the model with the backward leg did a good job of replicating the real boot, he added.)Van der Auwera said an issue with AI-generated ads is that while Meta provides a preview of ads prelaunch, they need to be opened one by one to check, which can be a time suck when brands run hundreds of different versions."When I first heard about Meta AI, I was really hopeful and thought it would take away a lot of my work and make my work a lot faster so that I can do more for my clients," Van der Auwera said. "Now, I have more work than before."Read the original article on Business Insider

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