San Francisco Orders Meta to Stop ‘Allowing’ AI Child Abuse Ads
| Source: Wired AI
Tags: Meta, CSAM, content moderation, AI-generated content, San Francisco, regulation, Facebook, Instagram
San Francisco's city attorney sent Meta a cease-and-desist after the company ran 350+ paid ads featuring AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery on Facebook and Instagram — including depictions of confirmed real children — with 250+ ads continuing to run even after Wired reported the first batch in August.
Details
San Francisco city attorney David Chiu sent Meta a cease-and-desist letter demanding the company explain how 350+ paid ads depicting AI-generated child sexual abuse content repeatedly ran on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The ads, uncovered by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), transformed real still images of minors — including a confirmed member of a European royal family — into video clips depicting sexual acts, then directed users to AI image and video generation apps that could create nonconsensual intimate imagery. The ads reached more than 29,000 accounts across the EU, United States, Australia, and India. Crucially, more than 250 of those ads continued running after Wired's initial August report, indicating Meta's content moderation systems failed to catch identical re-uploads of already-flagged material. Chiu's four-page letter asks that Meta's legal, child-safety, and advertising teams engage in 'prompt discussions' and notes that 'no company should permit its advertising systems to be used in this manner.' Meta's defense: there is 'no indication' the ads appeared in San Francisco, placing them outside the city attorney's jurisdiction. Meta says it had removed many ads before they were reported and all have since been removed for policy violations. Chiu rejected the jurisdictional argument, saying the scale and persistence of the failures undermine Meta's 'zero tolerance' claims.