Underage deepfake porn of Jenna Ortega and Sabrina Carpenter used in Instagram and Facebook ads
Instagram and Facebook distributed ads featuring AI-generated nude images of Wednesday star Jenna Ortega when she was 16 years old and singer Sabrina Carpenter, according to an NBC News investigation.
Both fell victim to promotions from Perky AI, an app available for $7.99 that markets itself as being able to create sexually explicit images of anyone using artificial intelligence. The app was developed by Cyprus-based company RichAds, which describes itself as a “global self-serve ad network.”
Perky AI contains a feature that allows users to fully undress women.
In this case, it used a manipulated and blurred image of the Scream actress, taken when she was only 16.
Another one of its adverts featured a deepfake of pop singer Sabrina Carpenter which also promoted the app’s nude feature. The original picture of singer was taken when she was in her early 20s.
The ad promised a global audience that it could make NSFW (not safe for work) images, which is internet slang and, here, a sexual innuendo to allude to nude or sexually explicit content.
Perky AI offers to alter outfits on command with several text prompts, such as “latex costume,” “Batman underwear,” and “no clothes.”
According to NBC, the software ran at least 11 ads on the Meta-owned social media platforms in February 2024 and ran more than 260 different adverts since September. Although it is currently unclear how many people have viewed the ads, one of the Instagram ones had over 2,600 views.
30 of the adverts were previously suspended for not meeting Meta’s advertising standards, however, the ones that featured the underage picture of Ortega seem to have gone unnoticed.
When NBC reached out to Meta to confront it about the ad, Ryan Daniels, a spokesperson for the company responded: “Meta strictly prohibits child nudity, content that sexualizes children, and services offering AI-generated non-consensual nude images.”
The app was also removed from Apple’s App Store when NBC News reached out for comment. It did not appear to be available on Google Play.
These nude images of Ortega and Carpenter appear amid an intensifying online crisis surrounding artificial intelligence and a lack of serious regulations around the new technology. In the past few months, stars such as Taylor Swift and Bobbi Althoff have also been targeted by AI-generated pornography, resulting in defamatory and humiliating content that used their likeness without consent.
For this reason, US lawmakers proposed a federal bill on 30 January 2024 that would allow victims of AI-generated porn and deepfake to sue for compensation.
