Your Ad Account Is Meta's Testing Ground

Meta has been running AI experiments on your ad creatives.

Not on a test account.

On yours. Right now.

There's a setting inside Advertising Settings called "Creative features."

It says:

"Test new creative features in eligible campaigns to help us improve our features and your ad performance."

Sounds helpful.

The problem is Meta turned it on automatically for most ad accounts.

You never opted in.

What does this actually do?

Meta uses your account as a testing ground for new AI-powered creative features before they roll out broadly.

Your real campaigns. Your real spend. Your real audience.

All being used to test things Meta is still building.

This could go well. It could also silently change how your ads look, perform, and behave in ways you can't trace back.

You should decide if you want to be part of that test.

Meta should not decide for you!

Turn it off here: Ads Manager > Advertising Settings > Creative features > Test new creative features > Off.

That's level one.

Level two is sneakier.

Even if you turn off account-level testing, every individual ad in your account has its own AI enhancements turned on by default.

And they reset every time you create a new ad or duplicate an existing one.

Here's what you're looking at:

By default, "Visual touch-ups" is on.

That means Meta can apply AI modifications to your images and videos.

Cropping, brightness adjustments, overlays.

You upload one creative. What runs may look different.

Some of these will be on or off depending on your account and campaign type.

Check each one manually.

Where to find these:

Go into any existing ad, scroll down past the creative to the ad-level settings.

You'll see Advantage+ creative enhancements and Essential enhancements with an Edit button.

The part that will catch you: these settings do not carry over from your templates or your previous ads.

Every duplicated ad resets to Meta's defaults.

If you duplicate a campaign to test a new ad and forget to check, your creative can be silently modified on launch.

I've seen this happen with clients.

The ad looked fine in the preview.

What ran had soft AI touch-ups applied that we didn't ask for.

Not catastrophic, but not what we built either.

Two steps, five minutes.

First, go to Advertising Settings and turn off "Test new creative features" at the ad account level. (as shown above)

This removes your account from Meta's testing program.

Second, build a habit: every time you create or duplicate an ad, scroll to the enhancements section before publishing.

Check both Advantage+ and Essential enhancements.

Make it part of your launch checklist.

Meta is pushing toward a world where AI handles more of the creative layer.

That may be fine eventually.

But right now, the controls exist, the opt-outs are buried, and the defaults favor Meta's research goals over your creative intent.

Use the controls while you have them.

TLDR

Meta auto-enrolled most ad accounts in AI creative testing via a setting in Advertising Settings. Turn it off.

Then check every ad individually, because AI enhancements are also on by default at the ad level and reset every time you duplicate a campaign.

Two places to check, both easy to miss.