The United Kingdom (UK)’s advertising regulator has banned a promotion for an AI video editing tool after it found the advert implied users could digitally strip women of their clothing.
The YouTube advertisement for PixVideo - AI Video Maker, seen in January, featured a "before" and "after" image of a young woman.
In the first image, red scribbles were overlaid on her midriff; in the second, parts of her bare skin were exposed.
The graphic was accompanied by the text "Erase anything," followed by a heart-eyes emoji.
Thereafter, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launched an investigation following eight complaints that the advert s£xualised and objectified women.
Complainants argued the promotion was "irresponsible, offensive and harmful."
In a statement, the ASA said: "Because the ad implied that viewers could use an app to remove a woman's clothing, we considered it condoned digitally altering and exposing women's bodies without their consent."
The regulator added that the material was "irresponsible, included a harmful gender stereotype and was likely to cause serious offence."
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While the ASA did not confirm if the woman in the image was a real person or AI-generated, it upheld that making such an assessment was not part of the initial investigation.
Saeta Tech, the owner of PixVideo, stated it understood why the advert was likely to cause offence.
However, the company blamed the "presentation and messaging" rather than the intended functionality of the software.
The firm maintained that it prohibits the creation of s£xually explicit content and employs automated detection tools to block such imagery.
Saeta Tech has since agreed not to run the advert again and has paused all advertising pending an internal review.
The ruling follows a series of controversies involving "deepfake" technology and the non-consensual creation of intimate images.
In January, Elon Musk’s X platform faced a global backlash after s£xualised images generated by AI tools were widely circulated.
The UK government announced in December that it would introduce new offences to make it illegal to create or supply AI tools that allow users to edit images to seemingly remove a person’s clothing.