Google Labels AI-Generated Ads With New Global Transparency Panel

On July 9, 2026, Google rolled out a new global system for labeling ads created or edited with artificial intelligence. The feature is meant to help users distinguish authentic content from machine-generated material at a time when generative AI is increasingly showing up in ad creative served across Search, YouTube, and Discover.

How the new panel works

The "How this ad was made" section appears in My Ad Center, Google's global ad settings hub. A user who wants to check an ad's origin clicks the three-dot icon or the info symbol shown directly next to the ad creative. The system then shows whether that ad was created or modified using generative artificial intelligence.

Depending on local legal requirements in individual countries, the AI-use disclosure may also appear directly on the ad itself as a visible label, not just inside the details panel.

Automatic and manual labeling

Google distinguishes between two scenarios. If an advertiser used Google's own generative tools to create or edit an ad, the system automatically labels the material as "created or edited using artificial intelligence." For content made with external programs such as Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, the disclosure obligation falls on the advertiser, who must flag the AI use within Google Ads tools.

We want to help people better understand the ads they see, while giving advertisers tools that are simple to use - Keerat Sharma, Vice President and General Manager of Ads Privacy and Safety at Google

Consequences for advertisers

Google says it will enforce the new rules strictly. Attempts to conceal AI use or publish material that misleads viewers are meant to trigger an immediate campaign block and suspension of the advertising account. This extends existing ad policies that, since 2023, have required similar disclosures for digitally altered political and election-related material.

An additional safeguard comes from SynthID, the watermarking technology developed by Google DeepMind, which embeds signals invisible to the human eye directly into the pixel structure of images and video frames generated with the company's in-house tools. That makes it possible to trace a piece of content's origin even after further editing or compression.

What this means for Poland's ad market

For Polish companies and agencies using Google Ads, the new feature means they must openly disclose the use of generative AI in their creative, on pain of having campaigns pulled. It also aligns with the direction of EU regulation, as the AI Act's provisions on labeling synthetic content, including deepfakes, move into further rollout phases in 2026.

The change adds pressure on the marketing industry to treat AI transparency as a standard rather than an option, especially as Polish consumers increasingly say they distrust ad content whose origin they cannot verify.

Sources: Google (blog.google), iMagazine (imagazine.pl)