Cyber Awareness

Report Finds Meta Still Hosting AI-Generated Child Abuse Ads in India Despite Government Order

By Today News Hours Editorial Desk

Meta's platforms continued to display advertisements containing AI-generated child sexual abuse material in India even after the Indian government ordered the company to remove such content, according to a new report from the Washington-based Tech Transparency Project (TTP).

The report, published Tuesday, states that TTP identified 332 ads containing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that ran on Facebook and Instagram over a 10-month period, with 274 of them appearing in August alone. Of these, 84 ads ran in India, and 78 of those appeared after the Indian government's directive and a meeting with senior Meta officials.

The findings come two months after India ordered Meta to remove all CSAM-related ads and content from Instagram, following a BBC Eye investigation that exposed paid advertisements promoting such material on the platform.

TTP said it found photos of real children, including a member of a European royal family, that had been manipulated using artificial intelligence in the ads. More than a dozen ads reportedly remained active even after TTP alerted Meta to its findings.

According to TTP, most of the ads began with a photograph of a child that was then altered through AI to depict the child performing sexual acts. One example cited by TTP, which ran in India, featured a manipulated image of a preteen girl with a voiceover claiming there were