Jess Weatherbed is a journalist who focuses on the creative industries, computing and internet culture. Jess began her career as a news reporter at TechRadar. She also covered hardware reviews.
Meta has filed a lawsuit against a company for advertising generative AI apps that allow users to “nudify”or “numbify”people without their consent. The lawsuit against Joy Timeline was filed after a CBS News investigation last week found hundreds of ads for digital undressing applications on Meta’s Facebook Messenger, Instagram and Threads platforms. Meta said that “this legal action underscores the seriousness of this abuse and our commitment in doing everything we can to protect our communities from it.”
“We will continue to take necessary steps, which could include legal actions, against those who abuse the Meta platforms in this way.”
Meta’s lawsuit aims to stop Hong Kong-based Joy Timeline’s ads for CrushAI Nudify apps from being listed across its social media platforms.
This legal action follows a recentCBS News investigation that found hundreds ads for nudify applications across Meta’s platform. Meta told CBS that it had removed many of these ads and deleted the accounts that were running them. It also blocked URLs associated with nude deepfake applications. However, it said it was becoming more difficult to enforce its policies, as exploitative generative AI tools find new ways to avoid detection. CBS’s reported that ads for AI nude deepfake tools were still available on Instagram, even after Meta removed ads from apps that were flagged by the investigation.
Many ads discovered by CBS, were targeted at men between the ages 18 and 65 in the US, UK and European Union. Apps that “undress” women without their consent, which are primarily advertised for use against female celebrities and women, are driving an increase of blackmail and sextortion schemes and often end up in the hands children.
404 Media published a similar report in April 2024, after discovering tools to create nonconsensual AI fakes advertised on Instagram. Apple and Google removed the apps flagged in this report from their respective app markets. San Francisco filed a lawsuit in August 2024 against 16 of the top deepfake AI “undressing websites”.
