San Francisco Directs Meta to Cease Facilitating AI Ads Related to Child Exploitation

The attorney for San Francisco has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Meta, demanding that the company cease “allowing” paid advertisements featuring AI-generated child sexual abuse content and requesting an explanation for how such ads continued to appear on its platforms.

On Tuesday, WIRED reported that Meta has published over 350 ads in recent months that converted still images of minors—some of whom are confirmed real individuals, including a member of a European royal family—into brief video clips that could show them in sexual acts. Clicking these ads would lead users to download AI image- and video-generation applications, some of which have the potential to digitally undress individuals or create other nonconsensual intimate images.

Researchers from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) discovered these ads, which included identical ads that had been uploaded multiple times, reaching over 29,000 accounts across the European Union. The ads displayed on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads also targeted users in the US, Australia, and India. WIRED initially reported on a set of 53 ads in early August, but over 250 ads in total have since been found running on Meta’s platforms after that report.

“Meta has not adequately addressed the pervasive issue of AI-generated child sexually explicit ads while profiting from them,” stated San Francisco city attorney David Chiu in a statement to WIRED. “These ads are deeply troubling and harm real children. Meta professes to have zero tolerance for child exploitation, yet the scale and persistence of these problems indicate that current measures are woefully insufficient. This situation is unacceptable, and Meta must improve.”

“No company—especially one that claims all advertisements are reviewed and approved prior to publication and then takes payment for that publication—should allow its advertising systems to be misused in this way,” Chiu wrote in the four-page letter his office sent to Meta’s legal team.

The letter raises numerous questions about how Meta’s ad policies and safety measures function and requests that the company’s legal, child-safety, and advertising departments participate in “prompt discussions” with the city office. “These findings are particularly alarming as they seem to represent a failure that Meta did not rectify upon first being notified of the issue,” Chiu noted.

Meta claims there is “no indication” that the ads were shown in San Francisco, suggesting they are “beyond the city attorney’s jurisdiction.” While Meta’s ad library contains some information about ads published in the US, it does not specify where in the US these ads may have appeared.

Meta previously informed WIRED that many ads identified by TTP researchers had already been removed prior to reporting—all have since been taken down for breaching its policies—and most had “fewer than 200 impressions” from specific accounts. “We do not tolerate nudify apps or any form of child exploitation, whether real or AI-generated,” a Meta spokesperson stated earlier. The company indicated that the “total ad expenditure” for the over 300 ads identified by researchers was “under $5,000.”

The letter, which states that the City Attorney’s Office has reviewed many ads discovered by TTP researchers, demands that Meta halt the ads on its platforms and clarify how these ads bypassed its moderation systems, how it escalates and reports ads to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and outlines how it addresses the advertisers behind such content and handles repeat offenders.