Facebook parent Meta dipped its toe into generative AI this week by announcing AI Sandbox. Advertisers can use it to create alternative ad versions, use text prompts to generate backgrounds and crop images for Facebook or Instagram ads.
Dig deeper: Facebook agrees to revamp adtech over discrimination charges
What it does. It lets advertisers:
- Create different versions of the same ad copy for different target groups, while maintaining the main message.
- Generate different assets for a campaign with the background generation feature.
- Crop images to adjust visuals for different formats, such as social posts, stories, or short videos like Reels.
AI Sandbox is available to select advertisers at the moment with expanded access in July.
Why we care. Meta is lagging in the AI publicity wars and knows it. The first sentence in the AI Sandbox announcement is, “Since the earliest days of News Feed in 2006, we have used machine learning and AI to power all of our apps and services, including our ads system.”
Last September, CEO Mark Zuckerberg gathered his top execs for an extended meeting on this. “We have a significant gap in our tooling, workflows and processes when it comes to developing for AI. We need to invest heavily here,” wrote new head of infrastructure Santosh Janardhan, an attendee.
Zuckerberg seems determined to put his foray into the metaverse behind him and is spending billions to catch up with AI. If it makes life easier for marketers, we’re all in favor of it.
Get MarTech! Daily. Free. In your inbox.
About the author
Constantine von Hoffman is managing editor of MarTech. A veteran journalist, Con has covered business, finance, marketing and tech for CBSNews.com, Brandweek, CMO, and Inc. He has been city editor of the Boston Herald, news producer at NPR, and has written for Harvard Business Review, Boston Magazine, Sierra, and many other publications. He has also been a professional stand-up comedian, given talks at anime and gaming conventions on everything from My Neighbor Totoro to the history of dice and boardgames, and is author of the magical realist novel John Henry the Revelator. He lives in Boston with his wife, Jennifer, and either too many or too few dogs.
