AI app ads promoting 'objectification of women' banned by watchdog

Regulator Bans AI App Ads for Objectifying Women

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had "zero-tolerance" for ads promoting AI tools that could sexualise or objectify women.

A series of social media adverts for AI apps have been banned by a UK watchdog for promoting "the creation of sexually explicit content and objectification of women". The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said five ads uploaded to Meta platforms for AI companion and video generating apps had objectified and sexualised women, including through harmful gender stereotypes.

Details of the Banned Ads

One of the ads used sexualised images of a girl under 18 to promote an AI companion app - while others invited users to upload images of their "crush" and turn images into "sizzling" videos. Meta had already removed the offending ads. But Nicky Baker of the ASA said such content had the potential "to cause real-world harm".

"We take a firm line on ads that are likely to cause serious or widespread offence and these ads are a clear example of why that matters," she said. "Encouraging and condoning the objectification of women and the creation of explicit content from people's images has the potential to cause real-world harm."

The ASA also said many of the ads it banned had promoted the creation of sexually explicit content using real women's images without their consent.

Legal Context

It comes only months after the UK outlawed apps to create non-consensual deepfake nude imagery - sparked by outrage over X's chatbot Grok complying with requests to nudify images of women on the platform. The ASA said the law had changed during its investigations and that ads identified in future would be considered in light of both the law and its own rules. Where ads are identified as illegal, it said it may notify platforms and law enforcement.

Monitoring and Enforcement

The ads were identified by the regulator using its AI-powered "Active Ad Monitoring System", which proactively searches for ads which might violate UK rules. It said the five ads it banned had depicted women irresponsibly, and were likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

Specific Advertisements

• Animcha Ltd - An AI companion generator that portrayed someone under 18 in a sexual way, presenting a synthetic female character as someone users could "customise" and instruct, combining sexualised imagery with childlike clothing and objects.
• Nexaipic - Two ads for an AI portrait generation tool encouraged users to "upload your crush and let AI create what you imagine" with sexually explicit videos.
• KH31 DD22 - An AI image-to-video generation app depicted a clothed woman being transformed into a video in which she was topless, suggesting the app could be used to create content that exposed women's bodies.
• Rusto AI - Adverts for an image generation tool encouraged users to create sexualised videos from photographs, condoning the digital manipulation of women's images to create sexually explicit content.
• PictoPop - An AI image-to-video generation app used sexualised imagery to demonstrate the tool, including by portraying the woman in a submissive position.

The ASA said none of the apps' creators responded to its enquiries. Baker said the watchdog had taken "proactive action" with its rulings, as part of a wider "zero-tolerance approach" to such adverts.

Meta's Response and Prior Scrutiny

While Meta had removed the ads for breaching its own rules prior to the ASA's action, the social media giant has faced prior scrutiny over similar ads appearing on its platforms. Researcher Alexios Mantzarlis reported in early September that an investigation had found 11,336 ads on Meta's platforms claiming they could be used to turn images of clothed people into sexually explicit videos. Most of these ads were removed automatically by Meta; however, Mantzarlis said many ads it identified had promoted domains or publishers that his site, Indicator, had previously flagged to the tech giant.

Meta declined to comment, but pointed to action it has already taken to tackle nudification apps, including using new tech to detect ads and taking legal action. The firm has also previously revealed that between November 2025 and January 2026, it removed over 344,000 ads for nudifying apps across Facebook and Instagram.

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