Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger host thousands of advertisements for sexually explicit AI “girlfriend” chatbots, according to a new report. The generative artificial intelligence chatbots engage with users and generate images and suggestive texts. They also collect a lot of user data.
Wired reviewed Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta’s advertisement library and found that the company has at least 29,000 ads for explicit AI girlfriend bots published across its social media platforms. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday morning. But the company told Wired that it’s reviewing the ads and removing ones that violate its policy.
“When we identify violating ads we work quickly to remove them, as we’re doing here,” a Meta spokesperson told Wired. “We continue to improve our systems, including how we detect ads and behavior that go against our policies.”
“Because ads may be delivered to people in their Feed from Pages or accounts they don’t follow, we want to help ensure that the ads don’t detract from the overall experience across our technologies. For that reason, we prohibit ads containing shocking, sensational, or excessively violent content, certain adult content and profanity.” — Meta’s advertisement guidelines
OpenAI dealt with a similar problem in January, when AI girlfriend chatbots flooded its new GPT store, calling themselves names such as “Korean Girlfriend,” “Virtual Sweetheart,” “Your girlfriend Scarlett,” and “Your AI girlfriend, Tsu✨.”
Just as AI girlfriend bot ads have caused issues for platforms, so too have ads for deepfake AI nudes. Last week, Apple and Google told 404 Media that they removed advertisements for apps that use AI to generate deepfake nudes from their app stores. Deepfake nudes have been a big problem in the early age of generative AI, with AI-generated nudes of Taylor Swift flooding social media in January and deepfakes of teen girls at schools in New Jersey, Washington, and California prompting investigations late last year. There is currently no federal law on the books regarding AI-made nudes.