AI app ads promoting 'objectification of women' banned by watchdog

A UK watchdog has banned five social media ads for AI apps after finding they pushed sexually explicit content and treated women as objects. The Advertising Standards Authority said the ads, which ran on Meta platforms, crossed the line through harmful stereotypes, sexualised imagery and prompts that encouraged users to turn other people’s photos into explicit material.

One ad went further than the rest. The ASA said it used sexualised images of a girl under 18 to sell an AI companion app, while others invited users to upload images of their “crush” and make them into “sizzling” videos. Meta had already taken the ads down by the time the regulator ruled on them.

The watchdog said the problem was not just bad taste. Nicky Baker, from the ASA, said the material had the potential to cause real-world harm, and the regulator said some of the ads promoted the creation of sexually explicit content using real women’s images without consent. It also said several of the ads depicted women irresponsibly and were likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

The timing matters. The UK only recently outlawed apps that create non-consensual deepfake nude imagery, after outrage over X’s chatbot Grok complying with requests to nudify women’s images on the platform. The ASA said the law changed while its investigations were under way, and that future ads will be judged under both the law and its own rules. If an ad looks illegal, it may now alert platforms and law enforcement.

The cases were picked up by the ASA’s AI-powered Active Ad Monitoring System, which scans for ads that may break UK rules. Among the banned ads were ones for Animcha Ltd, Nexaipic, KH31 DD22, Rusto AI and PictoPop. None of the app creators replied to the regulator’s enquiries.