TL;DR: From November 20 you alone carry the risk for anything Meta's AI features create or change in your ads. Meta may crawl the pages behind your ads, and it may withdraw any commercial feature without notice. Continuing to advertise is acceptance. Before the date: decide which Advantage+ enhancements you accept and switch the rest off. Review every AI variation before you publish. Add a robots.txt rule if you do not want Meta's ads crawler on your site.
Which date: October 30 or November 20?
Meta's preview of the updated Commercial Terms, read in English on October 26, 2026, gives one date twice. The banner says the updates go into effect on November 20, 2026, and the footer repeats it as the effective date. The first press reports, on October 22, gave October 30, and on October 26 the French translation of the preview still showed October 30 in its footer. Take November 20 as the date and expect the translations to catch up.
The terms in force today date from March 6, 2024. Everything below compares that version with the preview.
What changes, clause by clause
| Clause | Terms of March 6, 2024 | Terms of November 20, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| AI features | No section | New section: AI features "may make mistakes"; you are "solely responsible" for them and for the resulting content |
| Crawling your site | Nothing | Meta may use "web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents" on the pages behind your products |
| Licence on your content | Display, distribute and deliver | Adds "create derivative works" and the use of your content to "provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain" Meta's products |
| Warranties | Limits on liability only | Products come "AS-IS", with every warranty disclaimed |
| Withdrawing features | Nothing | Meta may change, limit or withdraw any commercial feature "without prior notice or liability" |
| Indemnification | Covers claims others bring against Meta | Covers claims "you or anyone" bring, "to the extent permitted by law" |
| Supplemental terms | Named only in passing | Five sets incorporated by reference, including the Business Agents terms and the Meta AI business assistant terms |
What did not change matters too. Advertisers in the United States still arbitrate with Meta Platforms, Inc. and waive class actions. Everyone else contracts with Meta Platforms Ireland Limited under Irish law. Meta's liability stays capped at 100 dollars or what you paid in the past twelve months, whichever is higher. And acceptance works as before: keep using Ads Manager after the date and you have agreed.
"AI features may make mistakes": what that covers
The new section is short. Meta may offer features that "optimize, enhance or create Content". They "may make mistakes and may not always produce accurate, complete, or suitable results". You "are solely responsible for and assume any and all risks associated with such AI features and any resulting Content". Two more lines follow. You must not remove any AI watermark or content-authenticating metadata. And you answer for any third-party software or service you use with Meta's products.
Read that against Meta's own list of Advantage+ creative enhancements. The Help Center page labels 17 of them as generative AI. Among them: text generation, text improvements, enhance media text, translations, image generation, background generation, visual touch-ups, video touch-ups, show summaries, add overlays and enhance CTA. The same page says Meta may switch some enhancements on by default. Show summaries is one of them, and it carries the AI label.
Meta switches a generative feature on. The feature rewrites your overlay text, expands your image with generated pixels, or writes a summary under your ad. From November 20 the output is your risk, whichever side switched the feature on. The Help Center still points to separate Ad Creative Generative AI Terms from May 6, 2024. The new Commercial Terms now carry an AI section of their own as well.
The third-party line reaches tools like Adsap. Anything a connected tool does in your account is on you under these terms. That is why Adsap shows a preview before every write and keeps an audit log of every change: you need to be able to answer for each one.
The crawler clause
The licence section now lets Meta, "or any entity acting on our behalf", use automated software on the domains, web pages and URLs "associated with your products or services". It may "access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl" them and "periodically pull updates". The stated purposes are to "provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products" and to "maintain the integrity and security" of Meta's products.
The terms name no way to opt out. Meta's page on its web crawlers does. It lists Meta-ExternalAds as the crawler that "crawls for advertising and other business-related products and services". A Disallow rule for that user agent in robots.txt blocks it, with up to 24 hours of delay while the crawler's copy of your robots.txt expires. That route is Meta's documentation, not the contract. The same page says FacebookExternalHit, which fetches your pages for link previews, "might bypass robots.txt when performing security or integrity checks".
What to do before November 20
- Decide which enhancements you accept, per account. Open an ad in Ads Manager, go to the Advantage+ creative section and switch off every generative feature you do not want. A duplicated ad takes Meta's current defaults, so check each new one. The product browsing opt-out follows the same steps. Adsap applies your enhancement settings on every ad it launches, for every enhancement the Marketing API exposes. Product browsing is not one of them, so that one still needs the check.
- Review every AI variation before you publish. The Help Center says you can read the enhance media text variations in the previews of the Enhancements section before publishing. Do that for text generation and image generation too. After the date, an inaccurate claim in a generated overlay is your claim.
- Keep the AI watermark. If you download a generated image and re-upload it, the metadata must stay. Removing it breaks the new terms.
- Add a robots.txt rule if you want to. A Disallow line for Meta-ExternalAds stops the ads crawler. It does not stop FacebookExternalHit, and it changes nothing in the contract.
- Know what your tools do. Keep a log of every change a connected tool makes, or use one that keeps it for you.
Do not switch off every enhancement in one move: image and video touch-ups fix placements and may be doing work you want. And do not treat a robots.txt rule as an opt-out from the terms. The only exit Meta offers is to stop using its products for business.
Frequently asked questions
November 20, 2026. That is the date on Meta's English preview of the updated Commercial Terms, in the banner and in the footer, read on October 26, 2026. October 30 came from the first press reports on October 22 and still appears in the French translation's footer.
No. The Updates section says that by continuing to use Meta's products for business after notice of the update, you agree to the new terms. The only alternative Meta names is to stop all business use of its products.
Yes. The same terms apply to everyone. The difference is the contracting party: advertisers in the United States deal with Meta Platforms, Inc. and arbitrate disputes; everyone else deals with Meta Platforms Ireland Limited in the courts of Ireland.
Sources
All Meta pages read on October 26, 2026.
- Meta Commercial Terms, current version, effective March 6, 2024.
- Meta Commercial Terms, preview of the updated version, effective November 20, 2026: the AI Features section, the licence section with the crawler clause, the warranties, updates and supplemental terms sections. The French translation of the preview shows October 30, 2026 in its footer.
- Meta for Developers, Meta web crawlers: the Meta-ExternalAds and FacebookExternalHit entries and the robots.txt instructions.
- Meta Business Help Center, About Advantage+ creative: the enhancement list with its AI labels and the default-on notes.
- Adweek, October 22, 2026: the first report on the updated terms, which gave October 30 as the date.