Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has announced a new set of AI tools to help advertisers create more effective and engaging ads on its platforms. The AI Sandbox for advertisers, which is currently available to a select group of advertisers, allows them to generate alternative copies, backgrounds, and image crops for their ads using generative AI models.
How the AI Sandbox works
The AI Sandbox is a web-based interface that lets advertisers experiment with different AI features for their ads. The features include:
- Copy generation: This feature allows advertisers to generate different variations of the same copy for different audiences while trying to keep the core message of the ad similar. For example, an ad for a travel app could have different copies for people who are interested in adventure, culture, or relaxation. The feature also suggests keywords and phrases that could improve the performance of the ad.
- Background generation: This feature makes it easier to create different assets for a campaign. It allows advertisers to generate backgrounds for their ads based on text prompts. For example, an ad for a coffee brand could have backgrounds such as “cozy living room”, “sunny terrace”, or “office break room”. The feature also provides options to adjust the color, brightness, and contrast of the backgrounds.
- Image cropping: This feature helps advertisers create visuals in different aspect ratios for various mediums, such as social posts, stories, or short videos like Reels. It uses AI to automatically crop and resize images to fit the desired format without losing important details or quality.
Meta claims that these features can help advertisers save time and resources, as well as increase the diversity and relevance of their ads.
Why Meta is investing in generative AI
Meta’s announcement comes after the company’s CTO Andrew Bosworth said last month that generative AI is one of the most exciting areas of research and development at Meta. He said that he expects to see some commercialization of the technology this year.
Generative AI is a branch of AI that can create new content or data from scratch, such as images, text, music, or video. It has many potential applications in various domains, such as entertainment, education, health care, and e-commerce.
Meta has been experimenting with generative AI for several years, especially in its Reality Labs division, which focuses on building immersive and social experiences in the metaverse. Some of the projects that use generative AI include:
- Codec Avatars: These are realistic and expressive digital representations of people that can be used in virtual reality or augmented reality. They are created by using deep neural networks to capture and synthesize facial expressions, eye movements, and speech.
- Synthetic Data Platform: This is a platform that can generate large-scale and diverse datasets for training computer vision models. It can create synthetic images of objects, scenes, and people with various attributes and poses.
- DALL-E 2: This is an improved version of DALL-E, an AI system that can generate images from text descriptions. DALL-E 2 can generate more coherent and detailed images than its predecessor, as well as manipulate existing images based on text commands.
Meta’s investment in generative AI reflects its ambition to become a leader in the metaverse, a virtual environment where people can interact with each other and digital content. By using generative AI, Meta hopes to enable more creativity and personalization for its users and advertisers.
How advertisers can access the AI Sandbox
Meta said that the AI Sandbox is currently available to a small group of advertisers who are providing feedback to improve the products. The company plans to expand access to more advertisers in July and integrate some of the features into its products later this year.
Advertisers who are interested in using the AI Sandbox can request access by filling out a form on Meta’s website. They will need to provide information about their business goals, target audiences, and current challenges with creating ads.
Meta also said that it will continue to develop more AI features for advertisers as part of its Meta Advantage suite, which aims to provide solutions for creative optimization, measurement, privacy, and safety.