Researchers say more than 250 ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse material have appeared on Meta’s platforms including Facebook and Instagram since early August, weeks after the company removed dozens of similar ads following reporting from Wired.
Wired reports that the nonprofit Tech Transparency Project says that in early August, Meta deleted roughly 53 ads across Facebook, Instagram and Threads that contained child sexual abuse material, telling the outlet at the time that most of the abusive ads predated the rollout of new AI tools designed to “better detect and block” harmful content. Now, the same watchdog group says ads containing sexual imagery of children are back, some of which are identical to those previously removed.
The problem didn’t stop there. Researchers say Meta has published more than 350 abusive video ads since the end of last year. Many link to so-called “nudification” apps tied to Chinese developers. Unlike the initial batch of 53 ads, the new ones used images of real children, not stock or generic photos.
One ad used an official photograph of a minor from a European royal family, transformed into a video depicting a graphic sex act. Researchers declined to name the royal in order to protect the victim.
“Researchers identified the real-world identities of four minors used in the ads,” according to TTP, whose director is Katie Paul. Three of the four are from the United States. One is a teenager who runs a social media influencer account on a Meta platform. Another is a teen influencer with a public account. The third is a stock photo model, a real person, labeled as “pre-teen” on stock photo websites.
The ads typically open with an innocuous photo of a preteen or teen girl (only one involved a boy), paired with text claiming the image is “not just a photo” and that “there are no restriction” on how it can be used. The videos morph the children’s faces into explicit sexual content, often depicting sex acts. Clicking the ads sends users to download AI face-swapping or video apps from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Many carry the tagline: “This is the AI that men actually use.”
Hellbound and Down 