Meta’s AI-powered ad tools are causing headaches for marketers, with several brands reporting bizarre and unintended ad content generated by the system. The issue stems from Meta’s Advantage+ creative suite, a set of AI features designed to automate and optimize ad creation. While the company touts these tools as a way to boost performance and save time, some advertisers say they’ve ended up with strange, off-brand, or even embarrassing ads—sometimes without realizing they were using AI-generated content at all. Bryan Cano, head of marketing at the clothing brand True Classic, shared a striking example on X. His top-performing ad—a stylish man in a fleece set—was replaced by an AI-generated image of a cheerful, unnaturally posed elderly woman sitting in an armchair. The ad ran for three days before customers noticed and alerted the brand. True Classic targets men aged 30 to 45, making the granny image not only irrelevant but potentially damaging to brand perception. Cano said the ad didn’t appear in the campaign preview, which left the team unaware until customers complained. Other brands have faced similarly surreal results. European footwear brand Kirruna discovered an AI-generated ad featuring a model with a leg twisted in an impossible direction. Meanwhile, e-bike company Lectric found its AI-generated ad asking, “What are the easiest eBikes to put in my trunk?” with a car seemingly flying through clouds—though the company caught it before it launched. Meta says advertisers can review AI-generated images before publishing and that the tools are designed to improve performance. However, multiple marketers told Business Insider that the problem lies in hidden settings. Two key toggles—“test new creative features” and “automatic adjustments”—are often enabled by default, even when advertisers try to turn them off. Some say Meta’s system reactivates these settings unexpectedly, leading to unintended AI-generated ads. Rok Hladnik, CEO of Flat Circle, a marketing agency managing $100 million in Meta ad spend, now spends two to three mornings a week manually checking and disabling AI features across dozens of accounts. “It randomly turns on, even for ads you’ve turned off for a second time,” he said. “It’s a complete mess.” Others have taken matters into their own hands. Jonas Vonk, founder of Yuzu Knives, created a tool called AdsFlow to help advertisers spot and manage Meta’s hidden AI settings more easily. “You really have to dig for them,” he said. “And switch them all off every time you run an ad.” Pieter Van der Auwera, who runs Meta ads for Kirruna, said the company had to issue refunds after customers received products that didn’t match the AI-generated ad images. He also noted that while the bizarre leg ad was technically inaccurate, it did correctly represent the product’s look. Despite initial excitement about AI reducing workload, many marketers now report doing more work to monitor and control the system. “When I first heard about Meta AI, I was really hopeful,” Van der Auwera said. “Now, I have more work than before.”