Google has confirmed that from 1 September 2026 it will begin migrating two existing features - Automatically Created Assets (ACA) and campaign-level broad match - into AI Max. This is not a soft rollout or an opt-in test. It is a platform-level transition that will affect live search campaigns without requiring advertisers to do anything at all. Which is precisely why doing something now matters.
AI Max is already live as a campaign setting for search. But this migration extends its reach significantly. Campaigns that were running ACA or broad match at the campaign level will effectively become AI Max campaigns in everything but name. For many accounts, that is a much bigger shift in control than it first appears.
What Is Actually Changing
Automatically Created Assets allowed Google to generate headlines and descriptions from your landing page content and existing ad copy. Campaign-level broad match gave Google latitude to match search queries well beyond your original keyword list. Both gave the platform room to operate - but they were still individual settings that advertisers could manage separately.
AI Max bundles these capabilities into a unified framework with its own query matching, creative generation, and URL expansion logic. The distinction matters because AI Max is not just additive. It changes how the campaign processes signals, how it serves ads, and how much editorial and targeting input is expected to come from the advertiser versus the algorithm. If your ACA and broad match settings were already dialled back, this migration may reintroduce them under a different flag.
There is also a structural question here. Campaigns migrated by Google will carry over your existing settings as defaults. But what those defaults allow within the AI Max framework may differ from what you intended when you first built those campaigns. Reviewing your current configurations before September is not paranoia - it is basic account hygiene.
The Creative Control Problem
ACA has always been contentious for advertisers who care about brand tone, compliance, or message consistency. Google generating headlines from your landing page might produce serviceable copy - or it might surface a statement that is technically accurate but not something you would choose to say in an ad. In regulated sectors like finance, legal, or healthcare, that is not a trivial risk.
Within AI Max, creative generation sits alongside URL expansion and query matching as interconnected signals. You can pin assets and add brand guidelines, but the system is designed to find combinations that perform, not combinations that you have approved. Before September, go through your current ads and identify which headlines and descriptions you would actively not want the system generating variations of. Asset pinning inside AI Max is your primary lever here.
If your account has assets that were created manually and are performing well, document them. Check whether ACA was switched on across campaigns where you did not intend it to be. Some accounts have had ACA running in the background for months without the team actively managing what it produced. The migration will preserve that state and hand it to a more powerful system.
Query Matching and Lead Quality
Campaign-level broad match already attracted criticism for bringing in irrelevant queries. AI Max's matching logic goes further, using signals from landing pages, ad assets, and audience data to decide what queries to enter. For lead generation campaigns where every click carries a meaningful cost, this matters. Broader matching increases volume, but volume is not the same as qualified leads.
The practical response is to ensure your negative keyword lists are in good order before September. AI Max respects negatives at the campaign and account level. If you have not done a thorough search term audit recently, run one now. Identify the categories of query that were already showing up via broad match and being wasted, and add them as negatives before the migration amplifies the pattern.
It is also worth checking whether campaign-level brand exclusions are in place. AI Max's matching can surface your ads against branded competitor queries unless you explicitly exclude them. That may or may not align with your strategy, but it should be a deliberate choice rather than a default.
Conversion Tracking Has to Be Right Before This Happens
AI Max optimises against conversion signals. The system uses those signals to decide which queries to match, which assets to show, and which URLs to serve. If your conversion tracking has gaps - unmeasured form submissions, missing phone call conversions, or a GA4 setup that does not import properly into Google Ads - then the machine is optimising against an incomplete picture of what actually works.
This is not a new problem, but the September migration makes it more urgent. Use the time between now and the rollout to audit your conversion actions in Google Ads. Check that every meaningful lead action is tracked, that values are assigned where possible, and that your primary conversion actions reflect genuine business outcomes rather than soft engagement events. If you are importing goals from GA4, verify that the import is current and that the right events are marked as conversions.
Accounts with clean, well-structured conversion data will get more from AI Max than accounts feeding it noise. The migration does not change that principle - it just raises the stakes.
How to Use the Time Between Now and September
Start with an account audit focused specifically on these two features. Which campaigns have ACA enabled? Which are running broad match at the campaign level? For each, decide whether AI Max is the right destination or whether you would prefer to opt out, restrict assets, or restructure the campaign before the migration runs.
Then work outward. Review your negative keyword lists. Audit your conversion tracking. Check your asset libraries and identify anything you would want pinned or excluded. If you have brand guidelines that your creative team enforces elsewhere, think about how to encode those constraints inside the campaign settings rather than relying on post-hoc review.
The September date is firm. Google will handle accounts that do not self-migrate by migrating them automatically. The choice is not whether this happens - it is whether you have shaped the conditions it happens into. Accounts that arrive at the migration in good order will retain more effective control than accounts that simply inherit whatever defaults the platform applies.