The National Trust has temporarily stopped all its adverts on TikTok as it investigates how a series of AI-generated content in its name was published.
Adverts generated by AI inviting TikTok users to become National Trust members appeared on the social media platform recently.
Experts expressed confusion about the adverts, pointing out that the AI-generated style was at odds with the charity’s usual branding.
The charity replied to one post on LinkedIn to say: “This was an automated feature from TikTok Ads which produced AI generated adverts in error.
“We’ve now paused all our TikTok ads while we investigate how this happened.”
A National Trust spokesperson added: “We are working directly with TikTok to understand how this occurred and to put additional safeguards in place to prevent it happening again. Campaigns have been paused while the investigation is ongoing.”
Charlotte Anstee, digital marketing executive at Ocean, posted on LinkedIn that the AI-generated adverts sat awkwardly alongside the charity’s climate change campaigning.
“I’m not sure how this slipped through, as the social team is so fab, and those who run their localised individual accounts had previously been told by head office that there is an AI ban,” she said.
“People are getting more and more savvy as to what AI looks like, and if you are a values-led brand like this, it’s never worth cutting corners.”
Alex Pollard, managing director of Pollard Media, said the National Trust’s AI-generated posts were strange given “they’ve got one of the country’s finest photo libraries, thousands of genuinely beautiful, real places they look after”.
“It’s become apparent that this wasn’t a creative decision by the National Trust team, but a perfect example of the TikTok ads feature catching out brands at the moment with automated ads they weren’t expecting,” he posted on LinkedIn.
Harri Brown, co-founder of TikTok agency Antler Social said that users of TikTok’s paid-for business platform such as the National Trust could prevent unwanted AI ads by making sure the “auto-add newly generated assets during delivery” option is turned off.
“If you’ve opened your ad group and seen a bunch of AI generated assets, don’t worry – you can turn them off/delete them,” she posted on LinkedIn.
“Just click the drop down toggle on your ad and it'll show you the variations that have been made without you realising.”
TikTok has been contacted for comment.
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