Meta’s supervisory board has called on the social media company to strengthen its protections for ordinary people targeted by sexualized deepfakes. The Council recommends adding AI-generated impersonations to Meta’s adult sexual exploitation policy, arguing that these images and videos are non-consensual by default. He also wants Meta to allow users to designate “connected accounts,” such as trusted friends and family members, who can report potential violations such as non-consensual intimate images on their behalf.
Finally, the Council recommends making AI-generated gender impersonation a separate category from harassment and nudity in the company’s content reporting and appeal forms. At the moment, only residents of Texas and Florida have access to a specialized form that lists deepfake intimate images as a reason for the report. The Council wants all Meta users to have access, because “non-consensual AI-generated intimate abuse, including sexualized identity theft, is a global problem.”
The Meta Oversight Board made the recommendations after investigating an incident in which the company continued to ignore a user’s report of a friend’s sexualized impersonation on Instagram. The investigation was launched after receiving a call from the user who reported an AI-generated video on Instagram showing a woman adjusting her dress, with her underwear visible in a few frames. According to the Council’s report, the journalist said he was a friend of the person impersonated in the contentless video. The person depicted in the AI video had already closed their account.
Two users initially reported the video to Meta, but the company did not remove the deepfake. The user who appealed to the Board had first filed an appeal with Meta, but the company has still not removed the video from Instagram. After the Board itself raised the issue with Meta, the company simply created the adult-only post but concluded that it did not deserve to be removed under its community standards.
Meta told the Council that at the time the post was initially published, there was no indication that the individual in the AI deepfake was a real person. If the person depicted had reported the video themselves, it would have violated their policy on adult sexual exploitation. Self-assessment would have constituted a clear sign of non-consent. In Meta’s view, other credible indicators of non-consent are reports from law enforcement, the media, or trusted partners. Captions or page titles suggesting that images or videos are being shared in a “vengeful or sensationalist” way will also work.
The Council asserts that Meta’s responses to its survey indicate that the only viable way for non-public figures to establish non-consent is through self-declaration. After all, it wouldn’t be easy for ordinary people to involve law enforcement or the media. These routes are mostly accessible to public figures. Meta is required to respond to these recommendations, but is not obligated to implement them. If it chooses to adopt them, the Council will monitor their implementation. For the particular case that triggered this investigation, the Board reversed Meta’s decision to leave the video online and asked the company to remove the post.
“It is clear that the scale, speed and sophistication of AI tools have led to a proliferation of non-consensual AI-generated sexualized content on a global scale. The dissemination of deepfake sexualized videos results in reputational and psychological damage, which disproportionately affects women and girls, and has a chilling effect on participation in social and political life,” the Council wrote in its investigation report.
This is not the first time the Board has criticized Meta on issues involving AI content and moderation. In mid-2025, he called the company’s failure to enforce its rules consistently “inconsistent and unjustifiable.” Last March, the Council urged Meta to create a new rule for AI content, separate from its disinformation policy. The recommendation stems from an investigation involving an AI-generated video that purported to show damaged buildings in the Israeli city of Haifa. The video was posted by an account claiming to be a news outlet, but it was actually posted by a user in the Philippines.
