In October, the ASA published the results of its trial of a new AI tool for identifying breaches of alcohol advertising restrictions, with interesting results for the No and Low sector. Trialling the new Ad Monitoring System, the ASA analysed nearly 6,000 assets promoting alcoholic drinks, no and low alcohol products, and sales and promotions within the category.
Ads were first screened by advanced AI models to identify potential rule violations, then reviewed by human experts for accuracy. 96% of alcohol advertisements reviewed were likely to comply with the relevant advertising restrictions, but this dropped to just 52% of ads for alcohol-free products, with just under half of ads reviewed being flagged for potential breaches. Most of these breaches among low and no products were found to relate to missing or inaccurate ABV % labels.
The ASA will continue to develop the new tool following the trial and hopes that this will allow ads to be more efficiently and effectively reviewed, ‘combined the scale and speed of AI with expert human judgement to ensure accuracy’.
