I duplicate a Meta Ads campaign, the AI adds stuff I never asked for

I duplicate a Meta Ads campaign that was working fine. Nothing to change, just splitting budget onto a new ad set. A week later, going through the settings line by line, I find two or three AI options checked that I never turned on. Meta put them back on the duplicate by itself.

Turns out I’m not the only one. The Next Web talked to eight advertisers and agency execs about Meta’s AI creative tools going sideways, and several describe the same bug: AI settings that flip themselves back on, even after you’ve turned them off. One agency says a Meta rep offered to check her ad IDs by hand before a big launch.

The loudest case is REI. Meta auto-enrolled the brand into its AI personalization tool without explicit consent, and generated an ad showing a bike with handlebars on the front AND the back, doubled-up chains, and blurry text. The ad ran for a week before it got pulled on June 22. REI apologized and dropped out of Meta’s generative AI program.

More cases keep piling up. For a women’s networking group in Montana, Meta added men to the visuals. For a client selling a pajama dress, Meta suggested swapping it for a shirt and pants. Jessica Gleim, the consultant who flagged both of those, also sums up Meta’s official line: “AI can make mistakes and that it is the advertiser’s responsibility to review the AI outputs.” Translation: the bug is a known feature, the checking is on you.

And yet nobody leaves. Gleim herself puts it plainly: “Meta’s still the best platform. It has the best data.” Me too: I check my duplicated ad sets, I grumble, and I’ve never once gone looking elsewhere over an extra handlebar.

What it means for your account

In practice, that’s one more check every time you duplicate an ad set: go back through the “creative enhancement” settings and see what got flipped back on by itself. Two minutes of checking. Otherwise, you’re the one explaining the two-handlebar bike to the client.