Mark Cuban Wants AI Ads Made Illegal, Warns of Social Media-Like Collapse

Mark Cuban isn’t thrilled about where AI might be headed, and he’s calling for guardrails before it’s too late. In a recent post on X, the billionaire investor urged the White House to make advertising inside AI models illegal.

He said it’s a lesson we should’ve learned from how social media algorithms chased engagement at the cost of truth and trust. “The last thing we need is to have algorithms designed to maximize revenue driving LLM output,” he wrote.

Cuban said he’s not completely against ads, but they need to be clearly marked and kept separate from chat responses. What worries him is the growing number of AI tools subtly recommending brands, with no clarity on whether money changed hands.

His comments follow a quiet trend across the industry. Big players like OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring former execs from Facebook and Instagram, people with deep experience in monetizing platforms through data and ads. In May, OpenAI brought in Instacart CEO Fidji Simo, who previously led Facebook’s ad business. Anthropic recently hired Instagram’s cofounder, Mike Krieger, to lead product.

Cuban has warned before that AI could make misinformation even harder to control. Now he’s pointing to the bigger risk: once monetization takes over, user trust could collapse just like it did on social platforms. “We need to get ahead of this,” he said, “not repeat the same mistakes.”