San Francisco Orders Meta to Stop ‘Allowing’ AI Child Abuse Ads
The City Attorney’s Office has asked Meta to explain how the harmful ads repeatedly ran on Facebook and Instagram. The company claims the ads are not under the city’s jurisdiction.
San Francisco's city attorney, David Chiu, has demanded that Meta cease running AI-generated child abuse advertisements, warning that the ads are causing harm to real children. The ads, discovered by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project, transformed still images of minors into short video clips depicting sexual acts. Meta claims to have zero tolerance for child exploitation, yet the city attorney's office says the ads have reached over 29,000 accounts in countries including the EU, US, Australia, and India.
Meta asserts that the ads were not displayed in San Francisco and are thus outside its jurisdiction, but the city attorney argues that San Francisco residents can still access the unlawful ads through Meta's online platforms. Meta has removed the ads that were reported, stating they violated its policies, and that the total ad spend was under $5,000.
However, the city attorney's office has raised concerns about Meta's moderation systems, asking the company to explain how the ads managed to bypass them and how it escalates and reports them to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
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