Meta sues AI ‘nudify’ app Crush AI for advertising on its platforms

Meta has sued the maker of a preferred AI “nudify” app, Crush AI, that reportedly ran hundreds of adverts throughout Meta’s platforms. Along with the lawsuit, Meta says it’s taking new measures to crack down on different apps like Crush AI.

In a lawsuit filed in Hong Kong, Meta alleged Pleasure Timeline HK, the entity behind Crush AI, tried to avoid the corporate’s evaluate course of to distribute adverts for AI nudify providers. Meta stated in a weblog put up that it repeatedly eliminated adverts by the entity for violating its insurance policies, however claims Pleasure Timeline HK continued to position further adverts anyway.

Crush AI, which makes use of generative AI to make faux, sexually express photos of actual folks with out their consent, reportedly ran more than 8,000 ads for its “AI undresser” services on Meta’s platform within the first two weeks of 2025, in response to the writer of the Faked Up e-newsletter, Alexios Mantzarlis. In a January report, Mantzarlis claimed that Crush AI’s web sites obtained roughly 90% of their visitors from both Fb or Instagram, and that he flagged a number of of those web sites to Meta.

Crush AI reportedly evaded Meta’s advert evaluate processes by organising dozens of advertiser accounts and continuously modified domains. Lots of Crush AI’s advertiser accounts, in response to Mantzarlis, have been named “Eraser Annyone’s Garments” adopted by completely different numbers. At one level, Crush AI even had a Fb web page selling its service.

Fb and Instagram are hardly the one platforms coping with such challenges. As social media corporations like X and Meta race so as to add generative AI to their apps, they’ve additionally struggled to reasonable how AI instruments could make their platforms unsafe for customers, significantly minors.

Researchers have discovered that hyperlinks to AI undressing apps soared in 2024 on platforms like X and Reddit, and on YouTube, tens of millions of individuals have been reportedly served ads for such apps. In response to this rising downside, Meta and TikTok have banned keyword searches for AI nudify apps, however getting these providers off their platforms solely has confirmed difficult.

In a weblog put up, Meta stated it has developed new know-how to particularly establish adverts for AI nudify or undressing providers “even when the adverts themselves don’t embody nudity.” The corporate stated it’s now utilizing matching know-how to assist discover and take away copycat adverts extra rapidly, and has expanded the listing of phrases, phrases and emoji which are flagged by its programs.

Meta stated it’s also making use of the techniques it has historically used to disrupt networks of unhealthy actors to those new networks of accounts operating adverts for AI nudify providers. Because the begin of 2025, Meta stated, it has disrupted 4 separate networks selling these providers.

Outdoors of its apps, the corporate stated it is going to start sharing details about AI nudify apps by Tech Coalition’s Lantern program, a collective effort between Google, Meta, Snap and different corporations to stop baby sexual exploitation on-line. Meta says it has supplied greater than 3,800 distinctive URLs with this community since March.

On the legislative entrance, Meta stated it could “proceed to support legislation that empowers mother and father to supervise and approve their teenagers’ app downloads.” The corporate beforehand supported the US Take It Down Act, and stated it’s now working with lawmakers to implement it.