Google will disclose which ads are made with AI globally

Google is launching a feature to help users identify when an ad they’re seeing was created or edited using AI, expanding a disclosure policy that, until now, only applied to election ads. AI tools make it cheaper and easier for businesses to produce ads, including synthetic or digitally altered content in place of real product photography, but that same content can mislead consumers who don’t realize what they’re looking at isn’t genuine. Google prohibits misleading and deceptive ads, yet outside election ads it had not previously required advertisers to flag when AI played a role in creating what a viewer sees.

The new disclosure, labeled “How this ad was made,” will be added to the “My Ad Center” panel — Google’s existing tool for managing ad preferences and viewing details about why an ad was shown or who paid for it. The panel is accessible globally by clicking the three-dot menu or info icon on ads seen through Google Search, YouTube, and Google Discover, and will now include an option showing whether AI played a role in an ad’s creation.

How that disclosure gets triggered depends on where the ad was made. When advertisers use Google’s own generative AI advertising tools, the “How this ad was made” label will be enabled automatically. But advertisers who build or edit ads using external tools are responsible for manually flagging AI involvement themselves — Google says it will not independently verify whether AI was used in those cases, putting the disclosure burden on the advertiser rather than the platform. On top of this baseline, ads may also carry an AI label in certain markets if local law requires it, meaning the exact disclosure a user sees could vary by jurisdiction.

Why it matters

Google is expanding AI disclosure requirements beyond election ads to all ads globally, introducing automatic labeling for its own generative AI tools while shifting responsibility for external tools onto advertisers themselves — a split that leaves how much users actually learn about an ad’s origin dependent on whether advertisers choose to self-report it honestly.