San Francisco orders Meta to account for AI child abuse ads on its platforms

San Francisco’s city attorney has sent Meta a cease-and-desist letter, a formal demand to stop, ordering the company to end paid advertisements that contain AI-generated child sexual abuse material and to explain how such ads ran on its platforms again and again. The four-page letter went to Meta’s lawyers and asks for a written response within 28 days.

It follows reporting by WIRED. Meta has run more than 350 ads in recent months that took still images of minors, some confirmed as real people including a member of a European royal family, and turned them into short videoclips showing sexual acts. The ads pointed users to AI apps for making images and video, some of which can digitally undress people in photos. WIRED first reported on 53 of the ads at the start of August, and more than 250 of the total ran after that report.

The ads were found by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project, a group that studies large technology companies. They appeared on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, with some identical ads uploaded several times. Together they reached more than 29,000 accounts in European Union countries and also targeted accounts in the United States, Australia and India.

“Meta has failed to address a known issue of AI-generated child sexually explicit ads, while profiting from them,” city attorney David Chiu said in a statement. His letter asks Meta’s legal, child-safety and advertising staff to hold “prompt discussions” with his office, and to explain how the ads passed the company’s moderation systems, how it escalates material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and how it handles repeat advertisers. Chiu wrote that the findings suggest “broader systemic problems” and raise “significant legal questions.”

Meta says there is “no indication” the ads were shown in San Francisco, which it argues puts them “outside the city attorney’s jurisdiction.” Its public ad library holds some United States data but does not show where in the country an ad ran. Alex Barrett-Shorter, a spokesperson for the city attorney’s office, said San Francisco residents can reach the ads through Meta’s services, so the matter is the city’s business. Meta has said every ad the researchers found is now removed, that most had “fewer than 200 impressions,” and that total spending on the 300-plus ads was “under $5,000.” A Meta spokesperson said, “We don’t tolerate nudify apps or any kind of child exploitation, whether real or AI-generated.”

The Tech Transparency Project says the problem has not stopped. Its director, Katie Paul, said new ads featuring some of the same children have run since the group’s September 8 report. Meta now has 28 days to reply. What to watch is whether that response addresses the moderation failures the letter lists, whether Meta contests jurisdiction or engages on the substance, and whether the city attorney escalates after the deadline. Meta has previously sued a Hong Kong-based company linked to nudify apps and says it has removed hundreds of thousands of similar ads.