Washington DC - Facebook and Instagram-owner Meta Platforms Inc has introduced new rules regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for political advertising.

Meta has decided to bar political campaigns and advertisers in regulated industries from using its new generative AI or AI-based advertising products. With this move, Meta aims to prevent the possible misuse of AI-based tools and the spread of election misinformation.

In updates posted to its help center, Meta said, "As we continue to test new Generative AI ads creation tools in Ads Manager, advertisers running campaigns that qualify as ads for housing, employment or credit or social issues, elections, or politics, or related to health, pharmaceuticals or financial services aren't currently permitted to use these Generative AI features."

According to the company, this approach will allow it to better understand potential risks and build the right safeguards for the use of Generative AI in ads that relate to potentially sensitive topics in regulated industries.

Meta reportedly announced recently that it was starting to expand advertisers' access to AI-powered advertising tools.

Such tools can instantly create backgrounds, image adjustments, and variations of ad copy in response to simple text prompts.

Among other tech majors, Alphabet's Google, which recently announced the launch of generative AI ads tools, is said to block a list of political keywords from being used as prompts.

TikTok and Snapchat owner Snap has also banned political ads.