One definition for disinformation is "deliberately misleading or biased information; manipulated narrative or facts; propaganda". The ad I viewed meets that qualification. This was not your typical advertisement trying to persuade the viewer that their product is better than others. It used a generated video of Elon Musk saying things that he did not say, endorsing a product he did not endorse in an attempt to appear legitimate. This is very different from traditional advertising.
The AI shitpocalypse is here. We get to watch it play out in real time over the coming decade.
GM doesn't claim that Ford is spreading "disinformation" -- but newspapers, TV stations, politicians, etc do constantly claim that people with the opposite viewpoint on a variety of topics are spreading disinformation. And now, despite the 1st Amendment, even courts are enabling censorship because the censored words are "hateful" or "disinformation" or "violence."
Free speech comes with the obligation of responsibility. You can't go around yelling "Fire!" in a theatre because of the clearly obvious possible negative consequences of that action. Legacy mainstream media appear to understand that better than big tech platforms do. Big tech wants to profit off the illegal and unethical content without having any responsibility for doing so. This is wrong.
The bare minimum standard of ethical behaviour is to not do things that harm other people. The ads I am referring to meet the test of causing harm to people that act based on the content presented. Plus they violate securities laws. It's pretty cut and dry for that case.
Due to which Tom Cruise talking in an ad had bigger impact.
Advertisements are often total bullshit (and I would likely consider anything created by AI to almost certainly be), but that is an entirely different phenomenon than today's concept of "disinformation."