AI will soon be creating many of the ads you see on social media

Sometimes it seems like all the ads we see online are made by AI and, soon, they might just be.

LinkedIn is joining the ranks of Google and Meta with generative AI-powered tools for advertisers. The social media site for People Who Hustle (derogatory) announced the launch of a whole suite of generative AI-based tools to suggest new copy for ads. The company said that, according to its own research, 55 percent of marketers plan to use Generative AI in their work; so they're beating them to it. The new tool, which was launched in beta to a small group of customers in North America, offers users up to five headlines and ad copy recommendations when users are crafting their posts.

"We know you’re stretched to do more with fewer resources while driving ROI for your company," Abhishek Shrivastava, the vice president of product at LinkedIn, said in a blog post introducing the new tool. "AI Copy Suggestions can help jumpstart your creativity and reduce the time you spend on your day-to-day tasks so that you can continue to focus on what matters–continuing to produce memorable campaigns and building your brand."

It's unsurprising that LinkedIn would launch this tool — it's pretty much expected. Every company is announcing a new generative AI tool right now and, for social media platforms, the first way in seems to be by helping marketers create new ads. Just a few weeks ago, Google launched Product Studio, a tool that helps sellers create product imagery using generative AI — it's sort of like the visual version of this LinkedIn update. Before that, Meta announced AI Sandbox, which helps advertisers create new copy, background images, and image cropping for ads on Facebook and Instagram.

AI has always had a home in marketing, but it's predominantly been used to target specific audiences with personalized ads. These kinds of tools serve to make that significantly easier and more efficient — but, just like audience targeting, human oversight is imperative.

"As marketers prepare to [use] these new AI-powered tools, like Sandbox, they need to remain focused on security, fraud, brand reputation and business threats," Nicole Greene, an analyst at Gartner, told TechTarget after Meta's AI Sandbox announcement. "AI-developed variations should still have human oversight prior to being delivered to consumers."