Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promoting AI tool for creators, emphasizing easy, lucrative opportunities with creator earnings on M

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Meta pays creators to market AI tool as easy, lucrative...

Meta pays creators to market AI tool as easy, lucrative gig on Meta

By AI Daily Post Edited by Brian Petersen, Editor-in-Chief

May 4, 2026 • Updated: May 6, 2026 • 2 min read

Meta has been pushing its newest AI suite through a network of micro‑influencers, promising a simple path to earnings for anyone with a social‑media following. The company’s outreach program, disclosed in a recent investigation, earmarked funds for creators to spin up dedicated Instagram, YouTube and TikTok channels that showcase the tool as a quick‑cash opportunity. While the ads appear polished, the underlying arrangement hinges on paid content that blurs the line between genuine recommendation and sponsored hype.

The strategy has drawn scrutiny because the same videos surface across multiple platforms, and some accounts vanished after journalists raised questions. This backdrop frames the following detail about how the campaign was executed and what happened when it caught the press’s attention.

Meta is running get-rich-quick ads for its AI tools Manus, integrated into Meta, paid creators to tell you not to get a part-time job. As part of the campaign, Manus was paying content creators to build out Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok accounts that promote its AI product as an easy, lucrative gig. (The creators’ TikTok accounts were taken down after The Verge inquired about them.) Some of these videos would also appear as official ads for Manus, but the posts on the paid creator accounts themselves often obscured their ties to the company.

The ads were not subtle. Posted by an account called “Manus AI by Meta,” one video presented Manus’ AI agent as an “Easy side hustle” that “absolutely anybody can do” — one that supposedly “takes less than 10 minutes” and can bring in a “potential $5k a month.” The young person in the video says, “There is literally no limit.”
— Meta pays creators to market AI tool as easy, lucrative gig on Meta — www.theverge.com

Why this matters

Is a side hustle really that simple? Meta's recent campaign suggests it might be. The company is running ads that frame its AI tool, Manus, as a quick‑cash opportunity, promising users can locate local businesses lacking a web presence, have the AI generate a site, then sell the product themselves.

Manus, the $2 billion acquisition, is being promoted through paid content creators who set up Instagram, YouTube and TikTok channels to tout the gig as easy and lucrative. Those creator accounts were removed from TikTok after The Verge questioned the practice, and some of the videos also appear in official Meta placements. The approach blurs the line between advertising and recruitment, raising questions about transparency and the realistic earnings potential for participants.

While the ads highlight speed and simplicity, they provide little detail on the effort required to secure clients or sustain revenue. Whether the model delivers on its promises remains unclear, and regulators may scrutinize the claims.