Meta Oversight Board Reviews Handling Of AI-Created Celebrity Porn

The Oversight Board of Meta Platforms, a social media giant, announced on Tuesday that it is currently reviewing the company’s handling of two sexually explicit AI-generated images of female celebrities that were circulated on its Facebook and Instagram services. The board, which operates independently from the company despite being funded by it, stated in a blog post that it would use these two instances to evaluate the overall effectiveness of Meta’s policies and enforcement practices concerning pornographic fakes created with the help of artificial intelligence.

To prevent further harm, the board spokesperson refrained from revealing the names of the famous women depicted in the images but provided detailed descriptions of them. The increasing advancements in AI technology have made fabricated images, audio clips, and videos almost indistinguishable from real human-created content. As a result, there has been a surge of sexual fakes proliferating online, mostly depicting women and girls.

Earlier this year, social media platform X, owned by Elon Musk, briefly blocked users from searching for all images of U.S. pop star Taylor Swift after struggling to manage the spread of fake explicit images of her. Some industry executives have called for legislation to criminalize the creation of harmful “deep fakes” and require tech companies to prevent such uses of their products.

As per the Oversight Board’s case descriptions, one instance involves an AI-generated image of a nude woman resembling a public figure from India, which was posted by an Instagram account that only shares AI-generated images of Indian women. On the other hand, the other image appeared in a Facebook group that shared AI creations and featured an AI-generated depiction of a nude woman resembling “an American public figure” with a man groping her breast.

Meta removed the image of the American woman for violating its bullying and harassment policy, which prohibits “derogatory sexualized photoshops or drawings.” However, it initially left up the image featuring the Indian woman and only changed its stance after the Oversight Board chose it for review. In a separate post, Meta acknowledged the cases and vowed to implement the board’s decisions.