Incident 581: Google Ads Allegedly Serving Content on AI-Generated Misinformation Sites

Description: Google’s advertising platform, Google Ads, has allegedly been found to be serving ads on AI-generated content farms that often disseminate misinformation. Despite policies prohibiting such practices, reportedly there are approximately 356 out of 393 ads from major brands that were found to be served by Google on these problematic sites. Particularly concerning according to the reporting were instances where Google Ads were found on sites like MedicalOutline.com, which spreads harmful health misinformation.

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Alleged: Google developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Subaru , Major brands whose advertisements were found on these sites , GNC , General public and Citigroup.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
581
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2023-06-24
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Junk websites filled with AI-generated text are pulling in money from programmatic ads
technologyreview.com · 2023

Google’s programmatic ad product, called Google Ads, is the largest exchange and made $168 billion in advertising revenue last year. The company has come under criticism for serving ads on content farms in the past, even though its own poli…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.