Meta political ads: disclose photoreal AI video and realistic audio

Meta holds social issue, election and political ads to a stricter AI rule than ordinary ads. According to the Meta ad standards page, read on 2026-10-05, advertisers must disclose when such an ad contains a photorealistic image or video, or realistic-sounding audio, that was created or edited with third-party generative AI tools.

The wording points at the output, not the vendor: it is about realism, and it names third-party tools. A clip generated through the Sume video API is made with a third-party tool from Meta's point of view.

What triggers it

What to do with a Sume clip

If the ad is in a covered category, assume a realistic generated presenter, crowd or street scene needs the disclosure. Use Meta's ad-creation disclosure control for it, and keep a record of the clip's origin.

For records, a Sume job carries a metadata field that Sume stores and does not send to the provider. Put a line there such as meta_siep_ai_disclosed: true, and keep the job id with the ad name. That makes it easy to answer a review request later.

Sume's docs do not say that clips carry a platform flag or credentials, so the disclosure has to be set in Meta's own ad flow.

Edge cases

Rules like this change; the date I read the page was 2026-10-05, and I only describe what it said then. Sume's docs describe a metadata field on video, image and music jobs that Sume stores on the job and does not send to the provider. I found nothing in the docs about Sume adding, keeping or removing C2PA credentials, watermarks or platform labels, so treat that as undocumented and check the delivered file.

• A real recording with a generated voice-over still contains realistic-sounding audio.
• A real spokesperson clip with a generated background may count as edited with third-party tools; err toward disclosing.
• If you are unsure whether an ad is a social issue ad, read Meta's definitions on the same page before building the creative.