Meta caught running ads for AI nudify app targeting women
What's the story
Meta recently came under fire for running ads promoting an AI porn-generation tool. The controversial advertisement campaign was for Kromix, an app that allows users to create deepfake videos of real people. One of the video ads even showed a woman closely resembling a prominent female US politician in explicit scenarios.
App details
Ads for Kromix app showed explicit content
Kromix, which describes itself as an "AI image styler," was advertised with a voice-over saying it has "no restrictions" and that "all the characters are real people."
One ad featured a woman closely resembling a prominent female US politician in front of a US flag, before cutting to explicit content.
The app also invites paid users to upload photos for use in scenarios like "bedroom rape" and "Disney love."
Target audience
Ads were specifically targeted at male users
The controversial ads were specifically targeted at male users with the tagline "Unleash Next-gen AI Magic." They were removed after WIRED inquired about them.
The account behind the campaign ran 32 ads in total, which ran for five to 46 hours each and mostly got 10 or fewer impressions.
Content management
Concerns raised about Meta's handling of such content
Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project that discovered the ads, raised concerns about Meta's handling of such content.
She said all of the ads that we've seen so far broadly on the nudify issue are exclusively sexualizing and nudifying and putting women into AI-generated porn.
This raises questions about how Meta will deal with this kind of content not just broadly but when it comes to female politicians as well.
Targeted individuals
Nonconsensual deepfake images and videos have been used against women
Nonconsensual deepfake images and videos have been targeting politicians and elected officials, mostly women, for years.
In January, Grok was used to create around three million sexualized images of women and girls.
Officials in Sweden, England, and Northern Ireland were among those targeted by people using this technology with official images as a starting point.
Policy breach
Meta has removed thousands of nudify ads in the past
Before an ad is published on Meta's platforms, it goes through a "review" against policies detailing what advertisers can post.
However, the company has been criticized for failing to detect thousands of ads promoting nudify services.
According to Meta's own figures, the company removed 344,000 such ads across Facebook and Instagram between November last year and January, and has also filed a lawsuit against at least one firm promoting the services.