AI ethics: The advertiser’s guide to using AI

In 2025, 78% of people surveyed say their organizations use AI in at least one business function. Currently, the AI market reached $244 billion. Experts predict it will grow beyond $800 million by 2030. 

Many marketers are using AI in their creative and media workflows — using AI to help with things like ideation, content generation, ad targeting optimization, data analysis, audience segmentation and basic task automation.  

While the advertising industry has always had to fight unethical advertising, from offensive ads to misleading claims, the widespread-use of AI has brought along with it new ethical concerns that brands have struggled to keep up with. Its fast rise and adoption has outpaced the creation and implementation of ethical guidelines and processes. But using AI without a strong ethical foundation puts your brand and reputation at risk. 

In this post, I answer the question, “Why is ethics important in advertising?” I’ll explore different examples of ethical and unethical AI use in ads and show you how you can use AI ethically in your ad strategy.

“There is a quote I love by the American historian Melvin Kranzberg. He wrote: ‘Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.’ For me, it serves as a reminder to always consider the impact of technology in a larger human and societal context – something I think applies particularly well to AI, where the consequences of its use can be harder to foresee. Responsible AI is about having that fuller picture." - Linda Leopold, Head of Responsible AI & Data at H&M Group

Consumers are already skeptical about the use of AI in advertising. 

Over 71% of consumers say they worry about being able to trust what they hear or see because of AI. 83% say that content created with AI should be required by law to label itself as such. While researchers have found that the use of AI terminology decreases consumers’ purchasing intention. 

Consumers’ lack of trust in AI typically comes down to three core issues: 

1.  Privacy 

2. Security 

3. Safety 

As a technology tied to a lot of “unknowns” and poor regulation, even the ethical use of AI can risk undermining consumers’ trust. 

With access to unprecedented amounts of consumer data, AI can give us deep insights into who consumers are and how we can influence them. But more insights mean more data to exploit and more room for manipulation — think highly-personalized campaigns that play on consumers’ biggest anxieties and insecurities and exploit their most-vulnerable impulses. 

"AI, for instance, can examine our browsing patterns to spot vulnerable or impulsive buying times. Then, advertisers can target us with advertisements that take advantage of these circumstances, persuading us to make purchases we otherwise might not have made." Sahir Maharaj, Medium 

AI-based deepfakes are another area of concern in advertising. Deepfakes use AI to mimic a person’s likeness. Take the TikTok account dedicated to deep fakes of Tom Cruise.

Ethically, deepfake technology weakens our "epistemic backstop” — reducing our trust in the audiovisual evidence we've relied on for what researchers term "credible testimony and knowledge sharing" throughout history. Synthetic manipulation in the form of deepfakes makes it harder for us to to trust this kind of evidence. 

"Let’s get one thing straight — deepfakes aren’t just about making people say things they never said. They’re about digitally manipulating reality in a way that looks eerily authentic. And brands are already experimenting with this in ways that feel both brilliant and borderline surreal." Laura J Bal, Medium 

In essence, it's harder to tell the real from the fake and this can undermine the authenticity of brand marketing materials and messages, making consumers more skeptical and less trusting towards the advertising they see. And these ethical concerns are backed by consumers’ perceptions: 62% agree that deepfakes are dangerous, while 58% label them a growing concern.

Some brands have used celeb deepfakes to promote and endorse their products without permission. Taylor Swift is one celeb who has regularly been used to promote products without her permission — directly infringing on her intellectual property rights and manipulating consumers’ buying decisions. 

Algorithmic bias and fairness is another big ethical issue, in which AI algorithms show personalized ad content in a way that reinforces bias. 

The data used to train AI matters. If the data used to train AI is biased then it can support harmful stereotypes — whether it’s targeting particular demographic groups different to others or showing personalized content that uphold problematic stereotypes. 

How does unethical advertising in a world of AI compare with classic unethical advertising examples?  

Misleading claims are one of the most common forms of traditional unethical advertising. 

In 2009, notable breakfast cereal manufacturer Kellogg allegedly misled consumers on the benefits of their Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal for kids. In their TV commercials, they claimed that their Frosted Mini-Wheats could improve children's attentiveness by around 20% compared to kids who didn't eat breakfast. But the study they used to support their claims in their ads found that only half of the children  saw improvement in their attentiveness, while only 11% saw a 20% improvement.

Beyond AI, unethical advertising often reinforces discrimination. Dove has been accused of whitewashing as early as 2011. Take the brand’s misguided Facebook ad in which showed a black woman taking off her t-shirt, revealing a white woman underneath after she used Dove’s bodywash.

"At its core, AI is a tool that relies on consumer data input. Just as a weapon is not inherently dangerous without human intervention, AI's ethical implications are primarily determined by the data it is fed and the intentions of those wielding it. Unfortunately, the marketing industry has a history of pushing the boundaries of ethics in pursuit of profit. From misleading advertisements to artificial ingredients, marketing has often prioritized sales over transparency and consumer well-being." - Elijah Clark, Forbes

Unethical advertising practices can irreparably damage consumer trust and erode a band’s reputation. More than half of consumers say they stop buying from a brand that breaks their trust. 

Unethical advertising can also create legal and compliance risks — leading to fines, potential legal action and reputational damage. In particular, consumers are notably unforgiving on data privacy issues with data breaches being the biggest cause of loss of brand trust for consumers.

Brian Green, director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, notes: "Being unethical is a great way to lose consumer trust and ruin your business. At the more practical level, issues like safety, security, reliability, privacy, trustworthy data use, being unbiased, fair, inclusive, transparent, and accountable—these are the principles that you will find in various corporate AI ethics principles, and they are a good start."

Many companies are prioritizing ethical advertising when it comes to AI use. To help uncover and avoid bias in their advertising, IBM has undertaken extensive research and collaborated with The Ad Council to analyze campaign data and understand and account for unintended bias in their ad data. They've also released the AI Fairness 360 Toolkit (AIF360), an open-source toolkit with over 75 fairness metrics and 13 bias mitigation algorithms that companies can use to uncover and reduce bias in their AI models.

In this post, I’m exploring the dark side of AI in advertising, but what about everything it’s doing right? Learn how AI is supporting innovation in branding and marketing in our past post. 

"Ethical concerns require a balanced approach to AI implementation — one that leverages its capabilities to drive business growth and innovation while rigorously upholding ethical standards to protect consumer rights."

- Sahir Maharaj, Data Scientist

When it comes to ethics, human oversight is essential in AI-driven advertising. AI makes "rational decisions" based on algorithms and data. It is not capable of the emotion based, values-based choices humans make everyday to ensure they are doing good and avoiding harm. 

Joe McKendrick and Andy Thurai say: "AI notoriously fails in capturing or responding to intangible human factors that go into real-life decision-making — the ethical, moral, and other human considerations that guide the course of business, life, and society at large."

At the highest level, government and regulatory bodies must work to develop ethical guidelines and make sure they are enforced in the advertising industry. For example, current legislation such as the EU AI Act and Colorado’s AI Act are some of the more recent examples of laws attempting to enforce ethical AI use. 

As AI is typically used across departments, with marketers relying on tech, sales and other teams for data and support, teams should work together to create an ethical framework for the use of AI and different department heads should help oversee the ethical use of AI across the company.

Many companies are already building out their own guidelines to help deal with the ethical concerns and implications of AI. 

Linda Leopold, Head of Responsible AI & Data at H&M Group, talks about how the clothing brands have implemented their guidelines: “At H&M Group, we’ve set up a framework for Responsible AI based on nine main principles. We believe AI should be: Focused, Beneficial, Fair, Transparent, Governed, Collaborative, Reliable, Respecting Human Agency, and Secure. We assess all AI projects with our Checklist for Responsible AI. This helps the teams identify and discuss different types of potential risks and ways to mitigate them. It also ensures our development and use of AI aligns with our company values."

Similar to H&M’s guiding principles, Advanced Media & Technology senior counsel John Monterubio recommends using your company values as your starting point for building ethical guidelines for AI use in your advertising strategy, such as transparency, diversity, fairness, equity, inclusion and accountability. 

He highlights how first defining your guiding values helps guide your future guidelines and policies: "Ethical AI, on the other hand, focuses on establishing and adhering to underlying values in how AI is used. So, an advertiser that wants to use AI ethically and responsibly in its advertising would need to first define its moral values that its AI use should reflect (i.e., the ethical AI principles) and then define the AI policies and procedures that ensure it follows those values (i.e., the responsible AI practices)."

Once you’ve nailed down your guiding ethical values, consider the main ethical issues connected to the use of AI in advertising that I covered above.

To help avoid AI influencing consumer behavior and undermining autonomy, transparency is essential. Luke Soon at CMS Wire says: "When AI systems are explainable, customers understand how decisions are made, which bolsters confidence in the technology. Transparency reduces skepticism and helps customers feel their interactions are fair and equitable." 

Your AI usage should also be built on strong data privacy and protection standards. It’s important to be upfront with consumers about: 

1. The types of consumer data you’ll use and why you’re using it.

2. How you use AI in your advertising (such as when AI has been used to create content).

3. Why are they seeing a particular ad (i.e. providing transparency around ad targeting).

4. The limitations of AI such as its vulnerability towards bias. 

It’s also essential to get consumer consent before collecting, processing or using their data in any way in your advertising. You should also give consumers an opportunity to opt out. 

As Deloitte’s ​Zac Faruque, director, risk advisory, data, privacy & analytics,​ notes, “One hour of GDPR learning a year is not enough." Strong ethical data privacy practices need to be embedded in your company's culture. That's the only way you'll make sure you are adequately protecting consumers' data and building your reputation as a business that consumers can trust. One way to go about this is to embed data protection officers and lawyers into your marketing teams, who can help oversee and make sure consumer data is being used ethically and legally. 

Bias prevention practices are also important. You can help limit AI bias by focusing on data diversity, which involves ensuring your data comes from multiple sources and represents a wide variety of perspectives and experiences. You should also do regular bias audits — reviewing your AI tools and data for any biases. 

It’s a good idea to lay out your policy and processes on a dedicated page on your website. It’s also important to communicate how you’ve upheld ethical guidelines via small print shared alongside your ads. 

Beyond consumers, it's also important you share your policies for ethical AI use in clear statements for regulators. Document your processes and show how you're upholding ethical and legal standards. 

The ethical advertising AI checklist 

I recommend building out your own red-flag AI checklist to help you quickly identify potentially unethical uses of AI in your advertising strategy. 

In the case of H&M, Leopold and her team have built out a two-page document that covers around 30 questions on the most essential AI ethical concerns — from how to identify security breaches to questions on data diversity. Leopold notes that the checklist is less about ticking boxes and is more about starting conversations, saying: “We need to talk about AI ethics.”

It’s important to remember that simply checking off a series of boxes alone doesn’t promote critical thinking and may lead you to overlook important emerging ethical concerns. Your approach to the ethical use of AI in your advertising should be open, engaged, and responsive — allowing for questions and concerns to come up as the technology and your use of it evolves. 

Here’s my checklist — amend and experiment with it alongside your team:

The checklist

Now you have your checklist, work with your team to put “if x then y” protocols in place — so you know exactly what to do next when an ethical issue has been flagged. 

Creating programmatic ads and need an AI ethics checklist to help guide your way? Use this checklist alongside our past post on programmatic advertising. 

AI offers impressive creative, strategic and analytical capabilities to the advertising world, but without the right ethical guidelines in place it can inadvertently be used to manipulate consumers, risk data privacy and damage brand reputations. 

By creating your own ethical guidelines, embedding regular audits and checks into your processes and appointing diverse teams to oversee the ethical application of the tech, you can get the benefits of AI without the ethical drawbacks.