Preparing for an Era of Deepfakes and AI-Generated Ads: A Framework for Understanding Responses to Manipulated Advertising

Abstract

Traditionally, the production and distribution of advertising material has relied on human effort and analog tools. However, technological innovations have given the advertising industry digital and automatic tools that enable advertisers to automate many advertising processes and produce “synthetic ads,” or ads comprising content based on the artificial and automatic production and modification of data. The emerging practice of synthetic advertising, to date the most sophisticated form of ad manipulation, relies on various artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as deepfakes and generative adversarial networks (GANs), to automatically create content that depicts an unreal, albeit convincing, artificial version of reality. In this article, a general framework is constructed to better understand how consumers respond to all forms of ad manipulation. It is anticipated that this article will help explain how consumers respond to the more sophisticated forms of synthetic ads—such as deepfakes—that are emerging at an accelerating rate. To guide research in this area, a research agenda is developed focusing on three manipulated advertising areas: ad falsity, consumer response, and originality. Furthermore, the implications for theory and industry are considered.

Keywords:

• Manipulated advertising
• synthetic media
• deepfakes
• generative adversarial networks (GANs)
• artificial intelligence (AI)
• machine learning

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Colin Campbell

Colin Campbell (PhD, Simon Fraser University) is an assistant professor of marketing, University of San Diego Business School, University of San Diego, San Diego, California, USA.

Kirk Plangger

Kirk Plangger (PhD, Simon Fraser University) is an associate professor of marketing, King’s Business School, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom.

Sean Sands

Sean Sands (PhD, Monash University) is a professor of marketing, Department of Management and Marketing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia.

Jan Kietzmann

Jan Kietzmann (PhD, London School of Economics and Political Science) is an associate professor of management of information systems, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.