Instagram Algorithms Reportedly Directed Children's Merchandise Ad Campaign to Adult Men and Sex Offenders

May 13, 2024

An Instagram ad campaign for children's merchandise, intended to reach adult women, was predominantly shown to adult men, including convicted sex offenders, due to the platform's algorithmic targeting. This oversight led to direct solicitations for inappropriate activities involving a 5-year-old model in the ads. Such incidents highlight the importance of responsible AI governance, trustworthy AI practices, and safe and secure AI environments.

Join us at Project Cerebellum to help develop guardrails for AI, map these incidents to HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Measure), and contribute to harm prevention efforts in AI governance. JOIN US

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.681, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.680, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.666, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: meta, instagram
Alleged developer: meta
Alleged harmed parties: instagram-users, instagram-sellers, children

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/723

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.