Meta served ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse content, continuing years of child safety failures
Researchers found Meta's ad library hosting AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery, some posted even after Meta was warned, part of a pattern stretching over multiple years.
Meta's advertising platform displayed numerous advertisements featuring artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse imagery over a nine-month period, according to an investigation by Wired. Some of these ads remained active despite direct confrontation from the company. This revelation echoes a similar issue found in a previous BBC investigation that exposed Instagram running paid ads for child sexual abuse material in India, which directed users to Telegram channels selling illegal content.
Researchers from the Tech Transparency Project discovered the ads in Meta's public Ad Library tool, which the company developed for advertising transparency. These ads were displayed to users in the US, UK, and over a dozen European countries, with at least one ad reaching more than 2,500 accounts in Europe. The images were explicit and lacked any attempt to disguise their content, indicating that these were not user-generated posts but ads that Meta reviewed and approved before generating revenue.
One of the ads led to a nudifying app called MaskAI, which was subsequently removed from Apple's App Store following Wired's discovery. The investigation revealed that several ads targeted low-following accounts, with some advertiser details tracing back to Chinese firms, including a former Meta ad reseller. Despite Meta's claims of implementing an AI detection system and removing 36 million pieces of child exploitation content last year, the findings raise serious questions about the effectiveness of the company's content moderation systems.
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