Warning: This story contains descriptions of abuse
Over the past 10 months, Meta reportedly ran hundreds of paid advertisements featuring artificial intelligence-generated images depicting child sexual abuse, including dozens of ads shown in India, according to a new report by US-based digital safety activists.
The report was published two months after the Indian government ordered Meta to remove advertisements and other content promoting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from Instagram. The order followed a BBC Eye investigation that revealed paid CSAM-related advertisements were appearing on Instagram in India.
The Washington-based Technology Transparency Project (TTP), external identified 332 advertisements containing CSAM-related material on Facebook and Instagram. Most of the ads—274—were found in August this year.
In a statement to the BBC, Meta said: “We do not tolerate nudity apps or child exploitation of any kind, whether real or AI-generated. These criminals constantly change tactics to avoid detection, which is why we continue to step up detection and enforcement.”
A TTP report published on Tuesday said several advertisements used photographs of real children, including members of European royal families, which had allegedly been altered using artificial intelligence. More than a dozen of the ads remained visible on Meta’s platforms after TTP alerted the company.
India accounted for 84 of the advertisements—approximately one-quarter of the total. Of those, 78 were posted after the Indian government ordered Meta to remove CSAM-related content and held discussions with senior company officials.
Following the BBC investigation, several Indian agencies, including the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and the National Human Rights Commission, announced that they would examine the allegations.
Although distributing child sexual abuse material is a criminal offence in India, Meta’s advertising policies prohibit content that sexually exploits or endangers children.
When contacted by the BBC, Meta said that if it became aware of suspected child exploitation, it would report the material to the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), as required by law.
NCMEC operates a centralised reporting system for online child sexual exploitation cases worldwide.
However, Bhuwan Rib, founder of Just Rights for Children—a network of more than 250 organisations working to prevent violence against children in India—said reporting suspected abuse is not enough.
Just Rights for Children has petitioned the Supreme Court of India, citing the BBC’s findings and seeking directions requiring social media platforms to identify and report users who promote child sexual abuse material.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk