Google is rolling out new transparency features that let people see whether ads were made or edited using artificial intelligence.
The "How this ad was made" panel will appear in My Ad Center across Search, YouTube, and Discover, and Google will automatically label ads created with its own AI tools while giving advertisers tools to disclose AI use elsewhere.
The move comes as generative AI opens new ad-creation possibilities for businesses.
What happened
Google is adding a "How this ad was made" section to its My Ad Center panel, accessible globally on Search, YouTube, and Discover. The panel will show whether an ad was created or edited with AI. Google will automatically add disclosures for ads made with its own generative AI advertising tools, and advertisers can now manually indicate if they used generative AI elsewhere.
Why it matters
As generative AI makes ad creation easier for businesses of all sizes, these transparency features help people understand which ads are AI-generated. Google already embeds imperceptible signals like SynthID into outputs from its generative AI tools, and in 2023 required disclosure of synthetic or digitally altered content in election ads. Existing ad policies continue to prohibit misleading and deceptive ads whether created with AI or not.
What to watch
The label may appear directly on an ad based on local requirements, either automatically or when an advertiser uses the control. These updates build on Google's ongoing AI transparency work across its advertising products.
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Google's move reflects the rapidly increasing use of generative AI in advertising and the need for clearer signals about how ads are made. The company has been building transparency mechanisms for some time—it already embeds imperceptible signals like SynthID into outputs from its generative AI tools and introduced disclosure requirements for synthetic or digitally altered content in election ads back in 2023. The new "How this ad was made" panel extends these principles to all advertisers and all users globally.
The approach balances advertiser convenience with user clarity. By automating disclosures for ads made with Google's own tools while providing a straightforward control for those using other AI tools, Google aims to lower the friction of compliance while maintaining transparency. The company frames this within its existing ad-safety policies, which continue to prohibit misleading and deceptive ads regardless of whether AI was involved in their creation. This suggests the concern is not AI itself but the potential for AI to enable deception at scale—a risk Google's existing verification and fraud-prevention systems are designed to address.
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