Get the latest tech news

Ads for Explicit ‘AI Girlfriends’ Are Swarming Facebook and Instagram


WIRED found thousands of ads running on Meta’s social platforms promoting sexually explicit “AI girlfriend" apps. Some human sex workers say the platform unfairly polices their own posts more harshly.

“As a sex worker, if I put anything like ‘I will do anything for you, I will make you come in a minute’ I would be deleted in an instant,” says Gemma Rose, director of the Pole Dance Stripper Movement, a UK-based sex-worker rights and pole-dance event organization. One shows an AI woman locked into medieval prison stocks by the neck and wrists, pledging, “Help me, I will do anything for you.” Another ad, targeted using Meta’s technology at men aged 18 to 65, features an anime character and the text “Want to see more of NSFW pics?” Carolina Are, an innovation fellow researching social media censorship at the Center for Digital Citizens at Northumbria University in the UK, says human sex workers feed the same needs and desires as racy AI girlfriend apps and also cater to lonely and disabled people.

Get the Android app

Or read this on Wired

Read more on:

Photo of Facebook

Facebook

Photo of Instagram

Instagram

Photo of Ads

Ads

Related news:

News photo

How fraudsters are getting fake articles onto Facebook

News photo

ByteDance, TikTok shelled out $7 million on lobbying and ads to combat potential U.S. ban

News photo

A24's New AI-Generated 'Civil War' Ads Generate Controversy