Google Ads Adds AI Content Labels to Its Asset Studio

Google Ads is rolling out a setting that lets advertisers label the image and video creatives in their campaigns as generated or edited with artificial intelligence. The AI content label setting is launching gradually through July across Google Ads, Display & Video 360, Campaign Manager 360, Merchant Center, and Ads Editor, according to Google Ads help documentation published this month. It gives advertisers one place to disclose AI use rather than tagging each creative by hand.

The change matters because that disclosure work had been manual. Advertisers running AI creatives across regulated markets previously had to add and track labels asset by asset, and the account setting turns that into a standing rule Google enforces when the ad serves.

What The Setting Does

New AI regulations in the European Union, India, and New York require that ads built with certain AI-generated or edited assets tell consumers the work involved AI. The label setting is Google's way of meeting that requirement inside the tools advertisers already use. It extends the "How this ad was made" panel Google launched on July 9, which added a global disclosure showing whether an ad's creative was AI made or edited. Once an asset is designated as AI created or edited, that panel carries the disclosure, and people reach it through the three-dot menu on ads across Search, YouTube, and Discover.

In the three jurisdictions with active rules, the disclosure goes further. Ads that target the European Union, India, or New York also show a visible overlay on the ad itself, not just a record in the backend. That distinction decides how much of the compliance burden the advertiser can hand to Google versus manage in the creative.

Where Advertisers Set It

Advertisers manage the labels from the Asset library, where a new "AI label" status column shows whether each asset is designated. They can label assets during campaign creation when prompted to review them, change the designation on existing assets, or apply their own label with outside design tools without tripping Google's rules against text overlays.

The controls reached accounts before the documentation did, as Search Engine Land reported, when a PPC specialist spotted the live "AI label" column across Google Ads, Merchant Center, and Ads Editor ahead of Google's update.

Google Can Label On Your Behalf

The setting is not entirely in the advertiser's hands. Google says it may apply labels itself in regions where it is legally required to, or when it receives signals from other platforms, and assets produced through its fully automated creative features can be labeled on the advertiser's behalf. Labels applied in those cases cannot be overwritten. Google also embeds machine-readable provenance data, including SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata, in every image and video its own tools generate.

Google cautions that turning on the setting does not by itself guarantee compliance with any given regulation and advises advertisers to seek legal guidance. The rollout arrives as Meta and TikTok build comparable AI-disclosure tools into their own ad systems.

Meta added updated disclosure tags for AI-generated ads earlier in July, and TikTok has introduced its own AI ad-disclosure rules, leaving the three largest ad platforms building native labeling within weeks of each other in response to the same transparency laws.