An REI Instagram ad circulating last week showed a Van Rysel EDR AF road bike that looked like it was assembled by someone who’d only ever heard a bicycle described over a bad phone connection. Handlebars sprouting from the seat. Multiple chains on a single drivetrain. Blurry, melted frame lettering. A human figure whose body and face appeared stitched together from different people. The ad ran for roughly a week before REI pulled it on June 22, according to Business Insider.
The culprit, REI says, was Meta’s own Advantage+ creative enhancements—a generative AI “personalization” tool that modifies ad images automatically. REI was auto-enrolled without explicit opt-in. A spokesperson told Business Insider: “Meta auto-enrolled us in an AI personalization tool that produced an inaccurate and inappropriate alteration of a vendor-provided image in some of our ads.” Van Rysel North America confirmed the original photo from its professional shoot was accurate and unaltered when supplied.
Here’s what Meta’s AI actually broke:
- Handlebars protruding from the rear seat area, in addition to normal front handlebars
- Multiple chains on a single drivetrain
- Distorted, unreadable frame lettering
- A composite human figure combining mismatched body features
- Cyclist Amity Rockwell’s face, algorithmically remixed without her knowledge
Rockwell, who was hired for the original Van Rysel shoot, put it plainly on Instagram, as reported by Fast Company: “The thing is, this was an official shoot that I was hired for. So why are they AI deep frying the images? To modify product they supposedly selling? And my face along with it?”
Whose Fault Is the Nightmare Bike?
Meta’s own documentation warns advertisers to review AI outputs—but REI let this one sail through for days.
REI pointed at Meta. Auto-enrollment is a dark pattern that deserves scrutiny and echoes broader tech scandals where users bear the cost of corporate defaults. But Meta’s own terms warn that AI outputs may be “inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, offensive, and/or inappropriate,” and place review responsibility squarely on the advertiser. The ad ran for roughly a week. Someone at REI saw this bike and let it go live.
The backlash landed hard. Backlash on Reddit’s r/REI labeled the output “AI slop,” with at least one commenter claiming to be an REI employee and citing internal pressure to adopt AI. For an outdoor co-op built on authenticity and environmental credibility, that’s the brand equivalent of finding microplastics in your own water bottle.
REI has since unenrolled from Meta’s generative AI program and apologized. The two-handlebar bike isn’t a freak accident—it’s what happens when creative judgment gets outsourced to an algorithm with no one watching the output. Advertisers running Meta campaigns can disable Advantage+ creative enhancements inside Ads Manager and audit live creative now, before the next impossible bicycle shows up in someone’s feed.
