Facebook and Instagram have been running thousands of advertisements for AI-powered nudify apps, even though Meta's rules explicitly ban such content. These apps use artificial intelligence to create fake nude images from photos of real people without their consent. One company alone, Joy Timeline HK Limited, promoted its CrushAI app in over 87,000 ads spread across more than 135 Facebook pages.
Ongoing Struggle to Curb Violations
At least 170 business accounts were involved in spreading these ads, primarily targeting users in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Germany. A CBS News investigation uncovered hundreds of these deepfake nudify ads still running on Facebook and Instagram, offering to produce fake nude images from a single clothed photo. Such technology has been weaponized mostly against women and in some cases teenage girls.
Meta's response has been slow. Although the company filed a lawsuit against Joy Timeline HK Limited in Hong Kong on June 12, 2025, for repeated policy violations, enforcement efforts have been ongoing since 2023. Despite these actions, the ads continued to appear for nearly two years before legal steps were taken.
In March 2025, Meta pushed a wider initiative by sharing over 3,800 URLs of offending apps with other tech giants through its Lantern program. This collaboration aimed to enable companies like Google and Apple to block the same malicious content across their platforms. Yet, reports in September 2025 revealed an additional 4,215 active nudify ads on Meta’s platforms after the lawsuit was filed, illustrating the scale of the problem.
This issue extends beyond Meta. Developers create AI models to generate realistic nude images from clothed photos and use mainstream ad networks to attract users while platforms profit from the ad fees. The victims, often women and girls, find little recourse. Various US states have introduced or are considering laws against deepfake pornography, and federal bills are in progress to address these concerns.
