AI app ads promoting ‘objectification of women’ banned by watchdog

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 were banned had depicted women irresponsibly, and were likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

One ad for an AI companion generator, developed by Animcha Ltd, was also found to have portrayed someone under 18 in a sexual way, the ASA said.

It presented the synthetic female character as someone users could “customise” and instruct, combining sexualised imagery with childlike clothing and objects.

Two ads for an AI portrait generation tool called Nexaipic encouraged users to “upload your crush and let AI create what you imagine” with sexually explicit videos.

An ad for an AI image-to-video generation app, identified only as KH31 DD22, depicted a clothed woman being transformed into a video in which she was topless.

The watchdog said this suggested the app could be used to create content that exposed women’s bodies.

Further adverts for image generation tool Rusto AI, which encouraged users to create sexualised videos from photographs, were found to have condoned the digital manipulation of women’s images to create sexually explicit content.

And an ad for an AI image-to-video generation app PictoPop 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.