Perhaps most glaringly, a Facebook page called “Divine Productions”—which claimed to represent the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—ran a CSAM ad that escaped Meta’s notice. Meta only disabled that page after TTP flagged it.
Katie Paul, TTP’s director, told Wired that Meta’s delayed response is an issue, because “there’s a lot of harm that can come from this all while Meta is raking in money in the process.” Meta does not disclose ad reach for every region, but TTP reported that the ads “collectively reached more than 29,000 people in [the] EU and 6,800 people in [the] UK.” About 80 percent of ads were served in the US, and a smaller portion ran in Australia, TTP reported.
Meta did not respond to Ars’ request for comment. A spokesperson told Wired, “We don’t tolerate nudify apps or any kind of child exploitation, whether real or AI-generated.” However, some ads evaded detection because “the clips of the minors were brief or blurred.” And Meta seemed to minimize that it profited off ads, noting that the flagged ads on average got fewer than 200 impressions and had a total ad spend under $5,000.
But TTP suggested that Meta’s potential undercount of CSAM ads could mean it’s profiting more than it’s admitting. Now lawmakers and regulators are swirling, Wired reported. Attorneys general in Michigan and Florida have said they’re looking into the CSAM ads. Last month, Senator Mark Warner (D.-Va.) sent a letter demanding that Meta “put an end to these illegal and inappropriate ads,” following Wired’s August report.
Meta intends to respond to that letter, the spokesperson told Wired. After that, Meta will probably have to answer to Australia’s eSafety Internet regulator, which recently banned under-16s from social media. A spokesperson told Wired that the Australia regulator is concerned and requested “information on this matter from the company at a senior level.”
Emma Hardy, director of communications at the Internet Watch Foundation, told Wired that “AI apps are making it far too easy to create realistic criminal imagery of child sexual abuse, creating the new risk of everyday photos of children being taken and transformed into sexual content.”
“Platforms and companies must make sure there is nowhere these apps can be advertised and spread,” Hardy said.