How The ASA Is Using AI To Be More Proactive In Identifying Misleading Advertisements

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has recently published its annual report, which highlights (amongst other things) their adoption of artificial intelligence software to identify misleading and irresponsible advertisements placed online.

The ASA's software is designed to capture and analyse all Instagram Stories produced by 'high-risk' influencers who have previously failed to clearly and consistently label when their content is an advertisement. The software will analyse content posted by such influencers with a view to determining whether such content is likely to be an advertisement but has not been disclosed as such. Consequently the ASA will be able to take a much more proactive approach in identifying and addressing advertising content that is not clearly marked as an advertisment, thereby reducing the volume of unlabelled ads that can mislead the public.