In the lawsuit, filed in Hong Kong, Meta claims that Crush AI has made several attempts to circumvent Meta’s ad review process and is allegedly continuing to place the ads.
These ads appeared across Facebook and Instagram. However, Meta removed them (and kept doing so) for breaking the rules, but allegedly, the company (Joy Timeline) continued posting more.
These “nudify”-type AI apps basically generate explicit images of people after receiving photos of said individual. Crush AI is one of the apps of the sort that heavily advertises. Back in January, an investigation by Alexios Mantzarlis, author of the Faked UP newsletter, discovered that Meta’s social media platforms had more than 8,000 Cursh AI-related ads during the first two weeks of the year alone!
Mantzarlis also noted that around 90% of Crush AI’s website traffic came from Facebook and Instagram.
The company allegedly created dozens of advertiser accounts to bypass Meta’s rules, and even frequently changed domain names, reportedly.
Back in February, Senator Dick Durbin sent a letter to Zuckerberg, urging him to address the ads and highlighting that those are violating Meta’s Advertising Standards by including nudity, sexual activity, and even harassment.
Apparently, Meta now has new tech designed to find and remove these types of ads quickly, and it has also expanded the list of terms, phrases, and even emojis that are flagged by its system.
Meta is also working with teams of specialists just to stay up to date with how these app makers avoid detection and evolve their strategies of bypassing the rules. Meta also says it will be sharing signals with other social media platforms so these apps can be addressed there as well.
In my opinion, Meta’s lawsuit against the maker of Crush AI is an important and overdue step. Apps like this raise serious concerns about privacy, consent, and digital safety. It’s alarming that thousands of ads promoting such technology were able to run on major platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Even though Meta repeatedly removed them, the app’s developers allegedly found ways to keep posting. This shows how easily harmful content can slip through, despite existing policies.
