A series of advertisements for artificial intelligence (AI) apps have been banned in the UK by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which regulates online advertising. The ASA ruled that the ads were inappropriate and could cause serious or widespread offense by objectifying women and promoting harmful gender stereotypes. These ads were found to encourage the creation of sexually explicit content and often involved the use of real or synthetic images of women without their consent. One ad for an AI companion app, created by a company known as Animcha Ltd, was banned after it depicted a synthetic female character in a sexualized manner, including through the use of childlike clothing and objects. This suggested that users could "customize" and interact with the character in a sexually explicit way. Two ads for an AI image tool called Nexaipic encouraged users to upload photos of women, including those of their "crush," to generate "seductive" and sexually explicit videos for personal gratification. Another ad for an AI app, identified as KH31 DD22, showed a clothed woman being transformed into a video where she was topless, implying the app could be used to generate explicit content. The ASA also found that an ad for Rusto AI, an image-to-video generator, promoted the creation of sexualized videos using real women’s images without their consent. Similarly, an ad for PictoPop, another AI tool, used sexualized imagery to demonstrate the app, often portraying a woman in a subordinate position. The watchdog emphasized that many of these ads encouraged the use of real images to create explicit content, which is now illegal under recent UK law. The ASA said it would now consider both legal standards and its own rules when reviewing such ads, potentially notifying platforms and law enforcement if ads are found to be illegal. The ASA used an AI-powered system called "Active Ad Monitoring System" to detect these ads, which actively searches for content that may violate UK advertising rules. However, none of the app developers responded to the ASA’s inquiries. Nicky Baker, a regulatory projects manager at the ASA, said the watchdog was taking "proactive action" as part of a broader "zero-tolerance approach" to such advertisements. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, had already removed these ads before the ASA’s intervention, citing its own rules. However, the company has faced previous scrutiny for similar ads appearing on its platforms. A researcher named Alexios Mantzarlis found 11,336 ads on Meta’s platforms that claimed to turn images of clothed people into sexually explicit videos. Most of these were automatically removed by Meta, but some were linked to domains or publishers previously flagged by his research site, Indicator. Meta declined to comment further but stated it had already taken action against nudification apps, including using new detection technologies and pursuing legal measures. Between November 2025 and January 2026, the company removed over 344,000 such ads across its platforms.