Meta ran hundreds of AI child-abuse ads for nine months

Meta ran more than 300 paid advertisements containing AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery across Facebook and Instagram between November 2025 and August 2026, according to a Tech Transparency Project investigation reported by Wired. The ads collectively reached more than 29,000 accounts across the United States, the United Kingdom, and more than a dozen European countries, with at least one reaching over 2,500 accounts in Europe alone.

Researchers found the material sitting inside Meta's own public Ad Library, the transparency tool the company built to show what runs on its platforms. Many of the ads linked out to deepfake 'nudify' apps. In one case, TTP said an ad used a photo a young girl had posted to her Instagram account in a sports uniform, animating her image into a video in which she is depicted performing a sex act.

"These ads made no effort to mask the images or hide what they were promoting," TTP Director Katie Paul told Wired.

The pattern the researchers describe is that Meta removes the material only after being publicly confronted. TTP initially identified roughly two dozen violating ads and then, in the hours before publication, uncovered around 30 more — several of which had gone live only after Wired had already contacted Meta about the problem. Bloomberg and Business Standard reported the same figures the same day. Four experts in our Who's Who directory shared the Wired report.

The report follows a separate BBC investigation weeks earlier that found Instagram running paid ads in India promoting child sexual abuse material and directing users to Telegram channels selling illegal content.