// ARS TECHNICA — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
“This is the AI men actually use”: Meta ads pushed apps nudifying real teens
Meta dragged its feet removing ads that nudify young girls’ Instagram pics.
Meta took days to remove ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on Facebook and Instagram. Some ads featured photos of real kids, including a press photo of a young member of a European royal family and images swiped from a popular Instagram profile of a preteen girl deemed an influencer.
In an investigation published Tuesday, the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) reported that Meta failed to detect 332 ads containing CSAM this year. The “vast majority” of ads promoted AI apps made in China, while many ads promoted so-called “nudify” apps that make it easy for bad actors to use AI and digitally alter images of children.
TTP matched “multiple CSAM ads to photos of real children that appeared online.” These ads seem to violate federal child pornography laws, since the Justice Department has clarified that AI CSAM is just as harmful as CSAM. The young royal’s image was “animated into a video of her performing a graphic sex act,” TTP found. Other ads animated a photo of a 14-year-old Instagram influencer “showing off her new sports club uniform” into “a video of her performing oral sex.” A third “preteen” victim “posing in a pink athletic outfit with pigtails” in a series of stock photos was morphed into a video where she looks frightened as she’s molested by an adult male, TTP reported.
Some kids depicted in CSAM ads could not be matched, but ads overwhelmingly depicted preteen girls, TTP reported. In captions, ads enticed Meta users to click with claims like “I can show you more” or promises that “our AI transforms your hidden desires into hypnotic videos. Dark, seductive, unforgettable.” Another boasted, “there are no restrictions. All the characters are real people and there are many options. This is the AI men actually use.”
Even more troublingly, TTP emphasized in a press release that these findings came after the group teamed up with Wired and flagged an earlier batch of 53 ads in August. At that time, Meta claimed that it had “recently rolled out new systems to better detect child exploitation.” But TTP “found hundreds of new CSAM ads ran after Meta boasted about its new technology.” And a Wired analysis published Tuesday “found hundreds of ads including explicit content that contain similar language to those ads found by the TTP researchers.”
The problem goes beyond CSAM. Wired also independently identified “hundreds of other related ‘nudification’ ads containing explicit content of adults on Meta’s platforms,” likely without their consent. Michelle Kuppersmith, executive director of Campaign for Accountability, which runs TTP, noted that the report comes after a historic $18 billion settlement forced Meta to agree to make changes to platforms to enhance child safety. Its ad approval process requires interventions, too, Kuppersmith suggested.
“If Meta’s ad approval process can’t detect and reject such obviously horrific content before it is shown to Facebook and Instagram users, then Meta’s whole ad review system should be called into question,” Kuppersmith said.
Meta has removed the ads flagged by TTP and Wired. But TTP criticized Meta for sometimes dragging its feet when deleting ads and inconsistently applying its policies in ways that extend harms.
In the hours after TTP flagged more than 300 ads, Meta quickly removed about half the ads from its archived ad library. But many of the ads were curiously not marked as violating Meta’s policy on child exploitation until TTP noted the discrepancy and Meta updated its records.