Explicit ads for nudifiers and AI girlfriend apps continue to plague Meta

“Hey, I’m Katie, created just for you. You can imagine and create me just the way you want,” says the female voice in ads placed on Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta products.

As she speaks, the video cycles through clips of AI-generated women engaged in a variety of sex acts.

It’s one of thousands of sexually explicit or suggestive ads that recently appeared across Meta’s products. Some, like the “Katie” ad, promoted pornographic AI girlfriend apps; others directed users to AI nudifier websites that can generate an explicit video of a person from a single uploaded photo.

The ads featured AI-generated images of women removing their shirts to expose bare breasts, pulling down their shorts and pants, humping and gyrating, and appearing to give manual erotic stimulation, among other acts. Some ads featured an AI-generated video of Taylor Swift seductively sticking a finger in her mouth.

Indicator identified more than 2,000 ads for AI girlfriend apps/sites and over 1,000 for nudifier services that broke the platform’s rules. Most were placed since Meta’s June announcement that it had implemented new ways to detect ads for nudifiers and other nonconsensual image generation tools. 

The findings follow reporting from Indicator and the American Sunlight Project earlier this month that found over 4,000 nudifier ads had appeared on Meta’s products since the company's June announcement.

Daniel Roberts, a spokesperson for Meta, said the company removed the latest ads flagged by Indicator and disabled the accounts behind them. He said the company continues to invest in technology to detect violative ads and accounts.

Over the past year and a half, Indicator's sustained reporting on nudifiers and undress apps has caused Meta and Google to remove thousands of ads, and played a role in Meta filing a lawsuit against a company that operates a large nudifier network.

Help us expose the companies enabling and profiting from nudifiers and undress apps by becoming an Indicator member. You get full access to our reporting, resources, and monthly workshops — and provide support for our independent investigative journalism.

The recent ads identified by Indicator promoted 5 AI girlfriend apps that appear to belong to a Chinese company, as well as more than a dozen nudifier sites that appear to be connected to a different Chinese company. Neither company responded to requests for comment. (Indicator Members can access a list of the sites and apps identified in this story here.)

Here’s a YouTube playlist of some of the ads:

The network of nudifier sites has placed at least hundreds of Meta ads since July. The sites include lover[.]ai, undressai[.]fan, and spicyx[.]video.

Last week, a nudifier site called pictovid[.]ai had 59 active ads that featured half naked women and the text, “Do you want to see the other side of your friends around you.” 

Another recent ad, which was placed via a page called “AI One-Click Undressing,” began with a static photo of a woman and the text, “This is just a photo… Until you animate.” The image transitioned into a video and the woman removed her top and grabbed her bare breasts.

“Upload/ Animate. Tempt,” read the on-screen text. 

The ads sent people to nearly identical nudifier sites that offer to “Transform Your Images into Spicy Videos with AI” for a fee. I identified sites in English, Korean, and Russian.

The sites do not list a company name and their domain registration information is private. But their homepage source code often shows that the default language is set to Chinese:

A few of the sites, including pictovid[.]ai, had a Google tag in their source code. I searched the tag on DNSlytics and found 4 sites that shared the same Google ad conversion tag. (If you want to learn more about this technique, read our Indicator Guide to connecting websites together using OSINT tools and methods.)

Seewed[.]com was the only site that didn’t have the same nudifier template. An archived version of the site from Sept. 2021 identified its owner as Beijing Shanshuidi Information Technology Co., Ltd. An archive of the same page from 2019 lists the owner as Beijing WonderSea Information Technology Co.,Ltd., but with the same corporate registration number. 

Both companies appear to have been, or still are, involved in mobile app and game development. However, I want to caution that I only found one point of connection between the company and the nudifier sites.

I emailed two addresses that were previously listed on seewed[.]com but didn’t receive a response.

Along with nudifiers, the network appears to operate a group of at least 5 AI girlfriend/companion sites, including phantasytimes[.]com, onlyfansmodels[.]ai, and stripclub[.]shop.

I initially connected the AI girlfriend and nudifier sites together because some of them were advertised by the same Facebook pages.

I found roughly 1,900 ads promoting phantasytimes[.]com in the Meta Ad Library. Some of the ads carried the tagline “Everything OnlyFans can’t offer” and featured AI generated women in the process of undressing. One ad featured an AI generated woman touching herself in the driver's seat of a car.

“I hope the security guard’s watching. I hope he gets off to me,” she says.

The AI girlfriend sites offer dozens of preset AI companions, many of which are inspired by anime. Among those labeled with a “HOT” banner are Aurora, whose persona is “Homeless girl”; and Mila, a “Hot sexy teacher who want [sic] to help.”

Meta removed some of the network’s ads prior to me reaching out. But new ads continued being launched. Meta’s enforcement also appears to have been inconsistent. In some cases, the platform failed to remove an identical version of an ad that it had already banned:

While searching for ads for the lover[.]ai nudifier site, I discovered another product that was using the “Lover.ai” brand. 

The ads promoted what turned out to be a group of AI girlfriend apps. The Google Play and Apple App Store listings said the apps provide a customized AI persona to chat and flirt with. The ads, however, showed rapid fire images of scantily-clad women engaged in sex acts. 

I found 4 active apps — two Android, two iOS — and one that appeared to have been removed by Google. They used the same, or very similar, ads. Roughly 1,300 ads for the apps were placed via dozens of Facebook pages that used the same naming format, such as AiPage0901-22, AiPage0915-7, and AiPage0815-8. Meta removed some of the ads and pages prior to me reaching out, but the operation was able to create new pages and run copycat ads.

One video ad began with a young woman on her knees being lightly slapped across the face, and ended with an image of the app’s menu of sexual positions:

The Persona.AI Pro Android app and Pulse.ai iOs app listed “Kaixin Canlan” as the payer and beneficiary. That name belongs to a Beijing tech company that makes mobile apps. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

I was able to view the advertiser information because the EU Digital Services Act requires that very large online platforms like Meta disclose the person or entity that paid for, and benefited from, an ad targeted at users in the EU. Though Indicator has detailed how Meta’s system is rife with loopholes, there are times when the real name of a company or person appears in the ad disclosure. 

Pulse.ai’s App Store listing said it’s made by “源杰 王,” which appears to be a person’s name. The same developer also made the Fantasi.ai AI girlfriend iOS App and, puzzlingly, a pet adoption app. I could not locate a company with that name. I further connected the apps together because Pulse.ai’s privacy policy was identical to Lover.ai Pro’s policy.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment but removed the three apps I flagged. Google did not respond to a request for comment and has not taken action on the Android apps as of this writing.