Ads for AI apps banned for sexually explicit content and objectifying women

A series of social media ads for AI apps have been banned for promoting the creation of sexually explicit content and objectifying women.

The first ad, for tyan.ai, presented a female character as someone users could “customise” and instruct, alongside sexualised imagery, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said.

The ad also portrayed someone who appeared to be under 18 in a sexual way.

Two ads for the AI portrait generation tool Nexaipic encouraged users to upload photographs of women, including their “crush”, to create “seductive” sexually explicit videos for the user’s sexual gratification.

An ad for AI image-to-video generation app KH31 DD22 showed a photograph of a clothed woman being transformed into an image of her topless, giving the impression that the app could be used to create content that exposed women’s bodies.

The watchdog found an ad for image generator tool Rusto AI encouraged users to create sexualised videos from photographs, and condoned the digital manipulation of women’s images to create sexually explicit content without their consent.

An ad for AI image-to-video generation app PictoPop used sexualised imagery to demonstrate the tool, including a woman being placed in a subordinate position, the ASA said.

In all five cases, the ASA found the ads were irresponsible and likely to cause serious or widespread offence by objectifying and sexualising women, including through harmful gender stereotypes.

It found many of the ads also actively promoted the creation of sexually explicit content using women’s images without their consent, adding: “There is no place for this type of content in advertising and we will take firm action against ads that promote it.”

The ASA found the ads with its own AI-powered, active ad monitoring system.

While the ASA’s investigations were taking place, the law changed to make the supply of AI “nudification” apps a criminal offence.

ASA regulatory projects manager Nicky Baker said: “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.

“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.

“That’s why we’ve taken proactive action through these rulings and why we have a zero-tolerance approach where we see ads like these.”