Meta sues AI-powered 'nudify' app
Thousands of CrushAI-related ads reportedly evaded Meta's moderation efforts in early January
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Meta is suing a company that reportedly ran thousands of ads on its network to promote a so-called "nudify" app. The lawsuit was filed against Joy Timeline HK Ltd., the Hong Kong-based entity behind the app CrushAI, which enables users to generate fake and non-consensual sexually explicit images of other people.
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The legal action follows multiple attempts by Joy Timeline to bypass Meta’s ad-review process, after the developer's ads were repeatedly removed for breaking the rules, Facebook's owner said in a statement Thursday.
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The lawsuit also follows a letter sent by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in February to Mark Zuckerberg, urging the CEO to address his company’s role in letting Joy Timeline run ads that violate Meta’s policies.
Durbin cited a report by tech news outlet 404 Media and research by Cornell Tech’s Alexios Mantzarlis that found that at least 8,010 CrushAI-related ads ran on Meta’s apps during the first two weeks of January.
Meta updated its policies regarding non-consensual intimate imagery over a year ago, to make it “even clearer” that promoting nudify apps is prohibited.
“We remove ads, Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts promoting these services when we become aware of them, block links to websites hosting them so they can’t be accessed from Meta platforms,” the company said in Thursday’s statement. It also restricts search terms like "nudify," "undress," and "delete clothing" on Facebook and Instagram.
The problem is larger than Meta and CrushAI, however.
A Bellingcat investigation published last year uncovered how sites like CrushAI promote themselves on mainstream platforms.
The investigation described a loosely affiliated network of similar platforms, which include Clothoff, Nudify, Undress, and DrawNudes. The apps have “manipulated financial and online service providers” by disguising their activities to evade crackdowns, Bellingcat reported.
For instance, it found that accounts on G2A, one of the world’s largest online video game marketplaces, were being used to collect payments for Clothoff. The site disguised the sales as if they were for downloadable gaming content.
The network has also tried to exploit payment services and marketplaces such as Coinbase, Patreon, PayPal, Shopify, Steam, and Stripe, in order to receive payments.