Meta Runs Get-Rich-Quick Ads for Its AI Tools
▼ Summary
– Manus, an AI company acquired by Meta for $2 billion, is running ads promoting a scheme where AI builds websites for local businesses to sell to them.
– The campaign paid content creators to build Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok accounts promoting Manus’s AI product as an easy, lucrative gig.
– The creators’ TikTok accounts were taken down after The Verge inquired about them.
– Some videos appeared as official Manus ads, but posts on paid creator accounts often obscured their ties to the company.
Meta is now using its own AI acquisition to push get-rich-quick schemes through targeted advertising. Manus, the AI startup Meta purchased for $2 billion last year, is running ad campaigns that promise users an easy path to fast cash by leveraging artificial intelligence. The strategy involves identifying local businesses that either lack a website or have poorly designed ones, using AI to build a polished site, and then contacting those businesses to sell the finished product back to them.
As part of this push, Manus paid content creators to build dedicated Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok accounts aimed at promoting the AI tool as a simple and lucrative side hustle. These creators posted videos that framed the process as an effortless way to earn money, though many of them did not clearly disclose their paid relationship with the company. After The Verge reached out for comment, several of the creators’ TikTok accounts were removed. Some of these videos also appeared as official Manus advertisements, but the sponsored nature of the content on the creator-run accounts was often hidden from viewers.
(Source: The Verge)
