Google is rolling out a new transparency feature that lets users see whether an ad they are looking at was created or edited using artificial intelligence. The addition, called ‘How this ad was made’, is rolling out globally through the My Ad Center panel and applies to ads across Google Search, YouTube, and Discover. The initiative reflects a broader industry trend toward transparent AI usage in advertising and digital media.
The feature sits inside a panel users may already be familiar with. Clicking the three-dot menu or info icon on any ad brings up My Ad Center, which already lets people block or report ads and see why a particular ad was shown to them. The new "How this ad was made" option appears alongside these existing tools, but only on ads that actually contain AI-generated or AI-edited content; it won't show up on every ad.
The panel is accessible globally without needing to be signed into a Google account, though signed-in users get additional customization options.
How reliable the label is depends heavily on how the ad was made. When advertisers use Google's own generative AI advertising tools, the disclosure gets added automatically to the ad's My Ad Center panel, with no action required on the advertiser's part. However, if a brand builds an ad using a third-party AI tool, a separate image generator or voiceover service, for instance, Google is instead introducing a new control that lets advertisers voluntarily disclose that AI was involved.
Notably, Google has confirmed it won't independently verify whether advertisers are telling the truth about third-party AI use, meaning the system relies substantially on advertiser honesty rather than automated detection.
The timing lines up with tightening rules around synthetic media in several major markets. In the EU, India, and New York, existing regulations already require AI disclosure on certain ads, and Google says visible labels may appear directly on the ad itself in these markets, not just inside the panel.
Until now, Google had only mandated AI disclosure for election ads, so extending it to commercial advertising is a meaningful policy expansion: one that also arrives just ahead of the EU AI Act's transparency obligations, which take effect in August.
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Google says its existing policies against misleading advertising remain fully in place alongside the new disclosure tools, and that using the AI label setting doesn't by itself guarantee compliance with any specific regional regulation. For users, the update offers a genuine new way to understand what they're looking at, as AI-generated product imagery and video become harder to distinguish from real photography.
For advertisers relying on third-party AI tools rather than Google's own systems, the feature shifts labeling responsibility onto them, leaving its real effectiveness dependent on how many choose to disclose honestly rather than stay silent.