UK Advertising Watchdog Bans Social Media Ads for AI Apps Promoting Sexual Explicit Content and Objectification of Women

A series of social media adverts for AI apps have been banned by a UK watchdog for promoting "the creation of sexually explicit content and objectification of women".

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said five ads uploaded to Meta platforms for AI companion and video generating apps had objectified and sexualised women, including through harmful gender stereotypes.

One of the ads used sexualised images of a girl under 18 to promote an AI companion app - while others invited users to upload images of their "crush" and turn images into "sizzling" videos.

Meta had already removed the offending ads. But Nicky Baker of the ASA said such content had the potential "to cause real-world harm".

"We take a firm line on ads that are likely to cause serious or widespread offence and these ads are a clear example of why that matters," she said.

"Encouraging and condoning the objectification of women and the creation of explicit content from people's images has the potential to cause real-world harm."

The ASA also said many of the ads it banned had promoted the creation of sexually explicit content using real women's images without their consent.

It comes only months after the UK outlawed apps to create non-consensual deepfake nude imagery - sparked by outrage over X's chatbot Grok complying with requests to nudify images of women on the platform.

The ASA said the law had changed during its investigations and that ads identified in future would be considered in light of both the law and its own rules.

Where ads are identified as illegal, it said it may notify platforms and law enforcement.

The ads were identified by the regulator using its AI-powered "Active Ad Monitoring System", which proactively searches for ads which might violate UK rules.

It said the five ads it were banned had depicted women irresponsibly, and were likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

One ad for an AI companion generator, developed by Animcha Ltd, was also found to have portrayed someone under 18 in a sexual way, the ASA said.

It presented the synthetic female character as someone users could "customise" and instruct, combining sexualised imagery with childlike clothing and objects.

Two ads for an AI portrait generation tool called Nexaipic encouraged users to "upload your crush and let AI create what you imagine" with sexually explicit videos.

An ad for an AI image-to-video generation app, identified only as KH31 DD22, depicted a clothed woman being transformed into a video in which she was topless.

The watchdog said this suggested the app could be used to create content that exposed women's bodies.

Further adverts for image generation tool Rusto AI, which encouraged users to create sexualised videos from photographs, were found to have condoned the digital manipulation of women's images to create sexually explicit content.

And an ad for an AI image-to-video generation app PictoPop used sexualised imagery to demonstrate the tool, including by portraying the woman in a submissive position.

The ASA said none of the apps' creators responded to its enquiries.