Content warning: this story includes descriptions and censored AI-generated images of sexual abuse.Facebook is hosting a large number of accounts dedicated to AI-generated content depicting coaches inappropriately touching young female athletes — and Meta isn’t taking them down, even when they’re directly reported by users.In the videos the accounts share, the coaches are older men. They’re shown in gyms and dance studios, with their hands on leotard-wearing athletes practicing gymnastics, ballet, and yoga. All the young athletes are women — or girls. Though precise ages aren’t specified, some look as young as teenagers, at times shown with braces on their teeth.In the AI-generated clips, which are nearly photorealistic, the athletes are often portrayed sweating profusely and breathing suggestively. The coaches run their hands over their lower backs and inner thighs as they stretch or practice poses, caressing and squeezing their bodies, and sometimes patting them on the buttocks or chest. In some videos, the older authority figures are shown touching the girls’ genitals over their outfits. More creepy videos show athletes sitting in a coach’s lap, or coaches kissing them on the mouth.The AI-generated girls in the clips react as though the touching is normal, often smiling and giggling as the harmful behavior occurs.But the touching depicted in the videos isn’t normal. It ranges from unnecessary to inappropriate to obviously abusive, mirroring the kind of real-world sexual abuse and grooming that are rampant in the sports they depict and in women’s athletics writ large.“I do consider this abuse material. These images sexualize and normalize abusive interactions between coaches and young athletes within a sporting environment where significant power imbalances already exist,” Kim Shore, a gymnast and safe sport advocate who consults with Gymnasts for Change International, told Futurism after reviewing numerous accounts publishing the AI content. “What is particularly disturbing is how easily inappropriate or abusive conduct can be disguised as playful, affectionate or helpful coaching behavior. This reinforces some of the very narratives that have allowed abuse to flourish in sport for decades.”But according to Facebook’s moderation system, the disturbing clips don’t violate Meta’s standards.Using an ordinary Facebook account, we alerted the social media platform to ten different accounts publishing this kind of content, reporting them for adult content and sexual exploitation. A full week later, we received notices from Facebook that eight of the accounts were didn’t violate the site’s rules, and would not be removed from the platform. (Two of the accounts vanished, though it’s unclear whether that had anything to do with our reports.)“We use a combination of technology and human reviewers to process reports and identify content that goes against our Community Standards. To keep our review process as fair as possible, we use the same set of Community Standards to review all reports,” read each of the eight identical notifications. “We’ve taken a look and found that the page doesn’t go against our Community Standards.”“We understand that this might be upsetting,” they added, “so we recommend exploring the options available to control what you see.”Some of the clips — which can attract more than 100,000 views apiece — are thinly veiled as educational, insinuating that the predatory coaches are helping the girls’ perfect their technique.“Keep your hips square,” an instructor is shown telling a young-looking ballerina in one video as he moves his hands to her private parts.“I’m trying,” she replies coolly, without flinching.Other accounts make little effort to hide their prurient intent. One has published nearly 20 slightly-different versions of the same AI video, which depicts an elderly coach alone with a leotard-wearing gymnast who looks no older than a teenager. In the comments of each clip, the poster urges viewers to click a link marketing a “members only” channel on WhatsApp — another platform owned by Meta — for the “prettiest video call anytime.” Another account’s header image shows a male coach’s hand directly on the crotch of a young female gymnast doing a split-legged headstand.In its Community Guidelines for “Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity,” Meta claims to forbid content showing “impending sexual activity, as indicated by positions which suggest contact is about to be initiated between a person’s hand… with another person’s genitals or anus.” Under guidelines for “Adult Sexual Exploitation,” its guidelines claim to prohibit material in which a “person in the imagery is (near) nude, engaged in sexual activity or in a sexually suggestive pose (this includes digitally created or AI-generated imagery).”Regarding “Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Nudity,” Meta claims to forbid “content (including photos, videos, real-world art, digital content, and verbal depictions) that sexualizes real or non-real children,” as well as “stimulation of genitals or anus, including when activity is imminent or not directly visible.”After receiving the support messages stating that the AI videos didn’t violate Meta’s Community Standards, we reached out to Meta’s media relations team, sharing links to the accounts we’d reported and asked why the content didn’t breach the social media giant’s guidelines. Shortly after we reached out, we noticed that all of the pages had been removed, and several of the support messages we’d previously received had been updated with a new response.“We removed the Page you reported,” read the new message. “We reviewed the Page and found that it goes against our Community Standards.”In a statement, Meta told Futurism that “whether it’s real or AI-generated, content that depicts abuse or exploitation has no place on our platforms. We’ve removed these accounts for violating our policies.”But it wasn’t until it was contacted by a journalist that Meta backtracked on its initial assessment that the pages didn’t violate its policies, a lapse that raises serious concerns about the company’s moderation practices and the effectiveness of the reporting policies available to everyday users. Why was this content held to a different standard when it was raised by a reporter, and not when it was flagged through official Facebook channels by a normal account holder?Asked about the gap between its response to an user on the platform versus a media inquiry, Meta defended its record on removing abusive material from its platform.“While there are times we miss things, we work hard to enforce our rules, which is shown by the fact that just last quarter, we proactively found and removed 98 percent of child endangerment posts before they were ever reported to us,” it said.After we reported the abusive pages, Facebook’s recommendation algorithm started serving up many more similar AI videos of coaches inappropriately touching, kissing, and groping young athletes in the feed of the account we used to flag it. The implication is dark: that Meta has the tech it needs to identify the disturbing clips, but instead of using it to crack down on the content, it’s using it to recommend more of the material to users who have interacted with it.The accounts often publish several near-identical AI videos per day, with some videos accumulating huge numbers of views. One video served to us after Meta shared its statement showed more than 176,000 views just two days after it was posted.“I really enjoyed that session. I feel fresh and positive now,” a girl decked in a pink leotard and matching socks, standing on one leg and holding the other in the air, tells the camera as a gray-haired trainer pats her genitals. Hash tags in the video’s caption include “#ballettok,” “#ballerina,” and “#balletmemes.”It’s hard to imagine that some of the videos aren’t being served by Meta’s algorithms to actual young athletes, raising the risk that they’ll see the grooming and abuse behavior normalized as they navigate the possibility of real-world exploitation.“I’m extremely concerned that children who are exposed to this content will internalize the message that if something similar is happening to them, they have to endure it because it is normalized in similar environments… they will be forced to further suppress their innate wisdom that this type of contact with an adult is not okay,” Shore told us. “Sport already does this to children by normalizing physical discomfort like training on injuries. Young athletes are taught to trust their coaches, follow instructions and accept physical contact as part of training. These images reinforce the dangerous idea that inappropriate touching or sexualized behavior is simply part of the coach-athlete relationship and athletes should accept it, tolerate it or even be grateful for the attention.”Shore added that one of her “greatest concerns” is that real-world predators could model behavior based on the abuse material proliferating on Facebook.“This AI-generated material acts a ‘how to’ manual for inappropriate behavior, particularly when abusive interactions are presented as ordinary coaching practices or expressions of care. It risks giving adults who are already inclined to exploit their authority examples of how to disguise abusive conduct as legitimate coaching, affection or playfulness,” she said. “We need to recognize that this material doesn’t exist in isolation. It circulates within a sporting culture where athletes have historically been conditioned to comply with authority, where boundaries have too often been blurred, and where abuse has frequently been minimized or excused.”“This content is normalizing behaviors,” she added, “that safeguarding efforts have spent decades trying to challenge.”As Futurism previously reported, Meta has also declined to remove AI-generated content depicting extreme physical child abuse. The company has elsewhere failed to catch hundreds of paid advertisements containing real and AI-generated child sexual abuse material, as Wired reported in September. Meta also faced backlash last year after Reuters reported on internal documents stating that Meta chatbots were allowed to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”Women’s and youth sports are notorious hunting grounds for abusers. According to a global 2021 study by the World Players Association, 13 percent of child athletes are subject to some kind of sexual abuse during their time in sports. That figure is likely an undercount, as TIME noted at the time, given that sexual abuse often goes unreported.In that context, the AI-generated Facebook clips of older men abusing their proximity to girls’ and women’s bodies to groom, sexualize, and exploit them is particularly appalling. That the athletes depicted in the videos are shown acting enthusiastic in the face of the predation is even worse, adding an air of normalization — or even romanticization — to the clearly exploitative encounters displayed in the AI-generated clips.But instead of taking its responsibility to police its platform seriously, it seems like Meta is operating by two different standards: dismissing regular users who report disturbing material, while jumping into action when it senses the threat of negative attention.Do you know anything about Meta’s content moderation strategy? Email us: tips@futurism.com. We can keep you anonymous.More on Meta and AI content moderation: Facebook Is Hosting Huge Numbers of Horrifying AI-Generated Videos of Violent Child Abuse, and Meta Is Barely Even Pretending to Care About Taking Them DownThe post Meta Is Refusing to Remove AI-Generated Videos of Coaches Inappropriately Touching Young Athletes When Users Report Them appeared first on Futurism.