San Francisco orders Meta to stop allowing AI child-abuse ads

San Francisco city attorney David Chiu has sent Meta a cease-and-desist letter ordering the company to stop "allowing" paid advertisements that include AI-generated child sexual abuse content and demanding it explain how the ads repeatedly ran on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The four-page letter, sent to Meta's lawyers, asks the company's legal, child-safety, and advertising staff to engage in "prompt discussions" with the city office about how its ad policies and safety systems operate.

The action follows a WIRED report that Meta has run more than 350 ads in recent months that transformed still images of minors, some of them confirmed as real individuals including a member of a European royal family, into short video clips that can depict them performing sexual acts. Clicking the ads directed people to download AI image- and video-generation apps, some of which could be used to digitally undress people or create other nonconsensual intimate imagery.

The ads were discovered by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project (TTP). Some identical ads had been uploaded multiple times, and in total they reached more than 29,000 accounts in countries in the European Union. The ads also targeted accounts in the US, Australia, and India. WIRED first reported on a batch of 53 of the ads at the start of August, but more than 250 of the total number of ads ran on Meta's platforms after that initial report.

"Meta has failed to address a known issue of AI-generated child sexually explicit ads, while profiting from them," Chiu said in a statement to WIRED. "These ads are deeply disturbing and cause harm to real children. Meta claims to have zero tolerance for child exploitation, yet the scale and persistence of these issues suggest current efforts are woefully inadequate. This is unacceptable, and Meta must do better."

"No company, particularly one that claims all advertisements are reviewed and approved prior to distribution and then accepts payment for that distribution, should permit its advertising systems to be used in this manner," Chiu wrote in the letter. He added that the findings "do not appear to reflect an isolated failure that Meta corrected when first alerted to the problem."

Meta disputes the city's authority to act. The company says there is "no indication" the ads were displayed in San Francisco, which would place them "outside the city attorney's jurisdiction." Meta's ad library, a public repository of ads, includes some data about ads published in the US, but it does not break down where in the US ads may have run, leaving the geographic reach of the campaign unclear.

The dispute centers on whether San Francisco can compel a company to change practices tied to ads that may not have appeared within city limits. Chiu's letter argues that Meta's own claims, that all advertisements are reviewed and approved before distribution and that it accepts payment for that distribution, make its advertising systems fair targets for scrutiny. Meta previously told WIRED it has policies against such content, but the persistence of the ads after the initial reporting is what Chiu says makes the case especially troubling.

What happens next depends on whether Meta engages with the city office's request for discussions or contests jurisdiction. The letter does not specify enforcement steps if Meta declines, and Meta's full response to the cease-and-desist demand has not been detailed.