Meta Ran Ads for a Tool Promoting Sexualized Political Deepfakes

Meta’s ad systems carried 32 promotions for Kromix, an AI image tool that marketed unrestricted sexualized content involving real people. One ad showed a woman resembling a prominent female US politician before switching to pornography, putting sexualized political deepfake material in a paid ad placement.

The concealment sat in the ad itself

Kromix presented itself as an AI image styler, but its advertising promoted a tool with “no restrictions” and real-person characters. The app invited paying users to upload photos for sexualized scenarios, including one involving sexual violence.

The apparent bypass had a simple mechanism. Most video ads used a cover image such as a beach, mountain, or waterfall, while the material behind it was pornographic. Meta says its ad review relies primarily on automated tools and begins before ads run; the company called the covers an adversarial tactic intended to evade detection.

The page running the campaign was created on August 3 and had no followers. Meta says it blocks and removes many ads that use obscuring tactics, but acknowledged that no system is perfect and said it was investigating how these particular ads bypassed review.

The campaign was exclusively targeted to male users under the tagline “Unleash Next-gen AI Magic.” Meta’s ad library showed individual ads running between five and 46 hours, and most received 10 or fewer impressions. The small visible audience narrows the known reach, but the ads still cleared the system meant to review them before publication.

Removal followed outside questions

Meta removed the Kromix ads after WIRED asked about them. Apple also removed Kromix from the App Store after WIRED requested comment; Apple said the app appeared to have added prohibited content and features after its initial review.

The policy conflict

• Meta’s ad policy prohibits sexual imagery, including nudity, sexual activity, and sexually suggestive material.
• Meta’s adult-sexual-exploitation policies also bar nonconsensual intimate imagery and promotion of nudify or AI-kissing apps.
• Apple says its review rules prohibit apps designed to generate, distribute, or consume pornography, and prohibit nudification apps.

A repeat problem with a political target

Politicians and elected officials, overwhelmingly women, have been targets of nonconsensual deepfake images and videos for years. The American Sunlight Project’s Benjamin Shultz said official portraits and press-conference footage can now become source material for low- and no-code tools available to anyone with an internet connection.

Meta says it removed more than 340,000 nudification-service ads from Facebook and Instagram between November and January, introduced AI technology to detect new violating ads, and pursued legal action against at least one nudify-service promoter. The company’s women’s-safety lead said Meta is investigating why Kromix’s ads bypassed its systems and how to improve them.

The Kromix case is not the only recent example. More than 50 Meta ads recently identified by Tech Transparency Project researchers contained AI child sexual abuse material or images of minors alongside sexually suggestive statements; Meta removed them after WIRED contacted the company. Some had run after Meta said it had introduced new AI technology to detect and block violating ads at upload.

Apple faces a separate repeat-screening challenge. Earlier this summer, San Francisco’s city attorney demanded that Apple remove 13 named apps and stop what the letter described as aiding and abetting the sale of explicit deepfake images. The unresolved operational question is whether reviews can catch deceptive ad creative before it is served and prohibited app features that Apple said appeared to have been added after approval.