Taking a firm stance against sexually explicit content in advertisements, Google is closing a loophole that allowed the promotion of services that allowed creation of deepfake porn or similar content.
The tech giant's updated policy, effective May 30, prohibits advertisers from promoting any services that may help users in creating or altering sexually explicit or nude synthetic content. This includes websites and applications offering guidance or tools for generating deepfake pornographic material.
"In May 2024, the Google Ads Inappropriate content policy will be updated to prohibit promoting synthetic content that has been altered or generated to be sexually explicit or contain nudity. We will begin enforcing the policy update on May 30, 2024," the company said in an update.
It added, "We take violations of this policy very seriously and consider them egregious. If we find violations of this policy, we will suspend your Google Ads accounts upon detection and without prior warning, and you will not be allowed to advertise with us again."
Google's current policy prohibits advertisers from promoting any content deemed "sexually explicit," a category defined by the company as encompassing "text, image, audio, or video of graphic sexual acts intended to arouse."
"This update is to explicitly prohibit advertisements for services that offer to create deepfake pornography or synthetic nude content," Google spokesperson Michael Aciman told The Verge.
He said any advertisement that breaches its policies will be removed.
The company employs both human reviewers and automated systems to ensure compliance with these policies, he said.
According to its annual Ads safety Report, Google "blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy, which includes many scam tactics and 273.4 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy. We also blocked or removed over 1 billion advertisements for violating our policy against abusing the ad network, which includes promoting malware."
Google emphasised the impact of Generative AI in the report, said, "This new technology introduced significant and exciting changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. Of course, generative AI also presents new challenges. We take these challenges seriously and will outline the work we are doing to address them head-on."
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