San Francisco Orders Meta to Stop ‘Allowing’ AI Child Abuse Ads
San Francisco Orders Meta to Stop ‘Allowing’ AI Child Abuse Ads
旧金山下令 Meta 停止“允许”AI 生成的儿童性虐待广告
San Francisco’s city attorney has hit Meta with a cease-and-desist letter telling the company to stop “allowing” paid advertisements that include AI-generated child sexual abuse content and asked it to explain how the ads repeatedly ran on its platforms.
旧金山市检察官已向 Meta 发出停止侵权函，要求该公司停止“允许”投放包含 AI 生成的儿童性虐待内容的付费广告，并要求其解释这些广告为何能反复在其平台上运行。
On Tuesday, WIRED reported that Meta has run more than 350 ads in recent months that transformed still images of minors—some of them confirmed as real individuals, including a member of a European royal family—into short videoclips that can depict them performing sexual acts. When clicked, these ads would direct people to download AI image- and video-generation apps, some of which could be used to digitally undress people or create other nonconsensual intimate imagery.
周二，《连线》（WIRED）报道称，Meta 在近几个月内投放了超过 350 条广告，这些广告将未成年人的静态图像（其中一些已被证实为真实个人，包括一位欧洲王室成员）转化为短视频片段，描绘他们进行性行为。点击这些广告后，用户会被引导下载 AI 图像和视频生成应用程序，其中一些程序可用于对他人进行“数字脱衣”或创建其他非自愿的私密影像。
The ads, which were discovered by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), included some identical ads that had been uploaded multiple times, and in total they reached more than 29,000 accounts in countries in the European Union. The ads that were shown across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads also targeted accounts in the US, Australia, and India. WIRED initially reported on a batch of 53 of the ads at the start of August, but more than 250 of the total number of ads ran on Meta’s platforms after this initial report.
这些广告由“技术透明项目”（TTP）的研究人员发现，其中包括多次上传的相同广告，总计触及了欧盟国家超过 29,000 个账户。这些在 Facebook、Instagram 和 Threads 上展示的广告还针对了美国、澳大利亚和印度的账户。《连线》最初在 8 月初报道了其中的 53 条广告，但在该初步报道之后，又有超过 250 条广告在 Meta 的平台上运行。
“Meta has failed to address a known issue of AI-generated child sexually explicit ads, while profiting from them,” San Francisco city attorney David Chiu says in a statement to WIRED. “These ads are deeply disturbing and cause harm to real children. Meta claims to have zero tolerance for child exploitation, yet the scale and persistence of these issues suggest current efforts are woefully inadequate. This is unacceptable, and Meta must do better.”
“Meta 未能解决 AI 生成的儿童色情广告这一已知问题，同时却从中获利，”旧金山市检察官大卫·邱（David Chiu）在给《连线》的一份声明中表示。“这些广告令人深感不安，并对真实的儿童造成了伤害。Meta 声称对儿童剥削采取零容忍态度，但这些问题的规模和持续性表明，其目前的努力远远不够。这是不可接受的，Meta 必须做得更好。”
“No company—particularly one that claims all advertisements are reviewed and approved prior to distribution and then accepts payment for that distribution—should permit its advertising systems to be used in this manner,” Chiu writes in the four-page letter his office sent to Meta’s lawyers.
“任何公司——尤其是那些声称所有广告在发布前都经过审查和批准，并随后接受分发费用的公司——都不应允许其广告系统以这种方式被利用，”邱在其办公室发给 Meta 律师的四页信函中写道。
The letter raises a host of questions about how Meta’s ad policies and safety systems operate and asks that the company’s legal, child-safety, and advertising staff engage in “prompt discussions” with the city office. “These findings are especially troubling because they do not reflect an isolated failure that Meta corrected when first alerted to the problem,” Chiu writes.
这封信提出了关于 Meta 的广告政策和安全系统如何运作的一系列问题，并要求该公司的法律、儿童安全和广告部门与市办公室进行“及时讨论”。“这些发现尤其令人不安，因为它们反映的并非 Meta 在首次获悉问题后就纠正的孤立失败，”邱写道。
Meta says there is “no indication” that the ads were displayed in San Francisco and this means they are “outside the city attorney’s jurisdiction.” While Meta’s ad library, which is a repository of ads, includes some data about ads published in the US, it does not break down where in the US ads may have run.
Meta 表示，“没有迹象”表明这些广告在旧金山展示，这意味着它们“超出了市检察官的管辖范围”。虽然 Meta 的广告库（一个广告存储库）包含了一些关于在美国发布广告的数据，但它并没有细分这些广告可能在美国的具体运行地点。
In response to Meta’s jurisdictional claims, City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Alex Barrett-Shorter tells WIRED that, because “San Francisco consumers can access the unlawful ads through Meta online spaces,” the matter is the city of San Francisco’s business.
针对 Meta 的管辖权主张，市检察官办公室发言人亚历克斯·巴雷特-肖特（Alex Barrett-Shorter）告诉《连线》，因为“旧金山的消费者可以通过 Meta 的在线空间访问这些非法广告”，所以此事属于旧金山市的管辖范围。
“We find Meta’s response astonishing. Meta appears less concerned about whether they’re guilty of exploiting children than whether San Francisco should say anything about it,” Barrett-Shorter says. “Meta has bigger problems to solve here than determining our jurisdiction.”
“我们对 Meta 的回应感到震惊。Meta 似乎并不关心他们是否犯有剥削儿童的罪行，而更关心旧金山是否应该对此发表意见，”巴雷特-肖特说。“Meta 在这里有比确定我们的管辖权更重要的问题需要解决。”
Meta previously told WIRED that many of the ads identified by the TTP researchers had already been removed before they were reported—all of them have now been removed for violating its policies—and most had “fewer than 200 impressions” from accounts. “We don’t tolerate nudify apps or any kind of child exploitation, whether real or AI-generated,” a Meta spokesperson previously said. The company said the “total ad spend” for the 300-plus ads found by the researchers was “under $5,000.”
Meta 此前告诉《连线》，TTP 研究人员发现的许多广告在被举报前就已经被删除——目前所有广告都因违反其政策而被删除——且大多数广告的账户“展示量不足 200 次”。“我们不容忍‘脱衣’应用程序或任何形式的儿童剥削，无论是真实的还是 AI 生成的，”Meta 发言人此前表示。该公司称，研究人员发现的 300 多条广告的“总广告支出”为“不到 5,000 美元”。
The letter, which says the City Attorney’s Office has reviewed many of the ads found by the TTP researchers, demands that Meta stop the ads from running on its platforms and explain how the ads managed to avoid its moderation systems and how it escalates and reports ads to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and asks the company to detail how it addresses the advertisers behind the content and repeat offenders.
这封信表示，市检察官办公室已经审查了 TTP 研究人员发现的许多广告，要求 Meta 停止在其平台上运行这些广告，并解释这些广告是如何避开其审核系统的，以及它是如何将广告升级并报告给国家失踪与受虐儿童中心（NCMEC）的，并要求该公司详细说明其如何处理这些内容背后的广告商及累犯。
The letter continues to say the findings suggest “broader systemic problems” with how the company detects potential child sexual abuse in advertising and that it raises “significant legal questions” for the company. “My Office’s objective is not simply to identify past failures but to ensure that Meta puts systems in place that prevent children from being sexually exploited through advertisements Meta is paid to distribute, and that Meta reliably satisfies the legal obligations that arise when it becomes aware of apparent child sexual exploitation,” Chiu writes in the letter.
信中继续指出，这些发现表明该公司在检测广告中潜在的儿童性虐待方面存在“更广泛的系统性问题”，并为该公司提出了“重大的法律问题”。“我办公室的目标不仅仅是识别过去的失败，而是确保 Meta 建立起能够防止儿童通过 Meta 收费分发的广告受到性剥削的系统，并确保 Meta 在意识到明显的儿童性剥削时，能够可靠地履行其法律义务，”邱在信中写道。
The findings from the TTP researchers stated that in some cases Meta did not respond to reports the agency made about abusive ads for more than a week, during which the ads were seen by hundreds more people. When some ads were removed, they were initially not marked as containing child sexual abuse content, according to TTP and a WIRED review of Meta’s ad library. “The scale, persistence, and nature of the problems documented here suggest that Meta’s isolated takedown efforts are woefully inadequate,” the letter from Chiu says, requesting Meta provide a response within 28 days.
TTP 研究人员的调查结果显示，在某些情况下，Meta 对该机构关于违规广告的举报超过一周没有回应，在此期间，这些广告又被数百人看到。根据 TTP 和《连线》对 Meta 广告库的审查，当一些广告被删除时，它们最初并未被标记为包含儿童性虐待内容。“这里记录的问题的规模、持续性和性质表明，Meta 零星的下架努力是远远不够的，”邱的信中写道，并要求 Meta 在 28 天内做出回应。