Google has released its 2023 Ad Safety Report, underscoring the significant impact of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in digital advertising industry, both as a source of new safety challenges, and as transformative tool to bolster its enforcement efforts.

The report, which outlines Google's ongoing efforts to combat malicious use of its advertising platforms, details that Google blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, a slight increase from the previous year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. The tech giant also blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, a slight uptick from 2022.

Google took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, a significant increase from 2022.

"To put the impact of AI on this work into perspective: last year more than 90% of our publisher page level enforcement started with the use of machine learning models, including our latest LLMs. Of course, any advertiser or publisher can still appeal an enforcement action if they think we got it wrong. Our teams will review it and, in the cases where we find errors, use it to improve our systems," said Google VP & GM of Ads Privacy and Safety, Duncan Lennox.

The company launched its Limited Ads Serving policy in November 2023 to limit the reach of advertisers with whom it is less familiar, thereby reducing the risk of scams and misleading ads.

Google blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating its misrepresentation policy, and 273.4 million ads for violating its financial services policy. The company is also investing in election integrity, verifying more than 5,000 new election advertisers and removing more than 7.3 million election ads from advertisers who did not complete verification in 2023.

"Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem," said Lennox.

The report outlined that the key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI, which introduced significant changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing, as well as new challenges.

Lennox said: "Just as importantly, generative AI presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly. Our teams are embracing this transformative technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), so that we can better keep people safe online."

The report also covered Google's efforts to counter the ever-shifting threats of scams and fraud online, as well as its approach to political advertising.

"Political ads are an important part of democratic elections. Candidates and parties use ads to raise awareness, share information, and engage potential voters. In a year with several major elections around the world, we want to make sure voters continue to trust the election ads they may see on our platforms," said Lennox.