Exclusive | AI sex ads and deepfake micro-dramas are infiltrating childrens feeds but TikTok says its legal
A woman is having steamy sex with her werewolf brother-in-law on TikTok while another gets pregnant by a dragon — and kids can see it all.Welcome to the new era of AI-generated “microdramas,” where explicit, absurd soap opera slop invades the internet, including teens’ screens, with zero regulation.These AI-generated clips come from China’s vertical short-drama (duanju) industry, an $14 billion operation that floods social media with addictive and often X-rated.Key platforms include TikTok’s PineDrama along with major Chinese-based apps ReelShort and DramaBox, which feature romance and fantasy storylines with episodes lasting just 1 to 2 minutes.When a user watches the entire “episode,” TikTok’s algorithm registers their attention as deep interest — and starts sending even more dragon smut in their feeds.But unlike Netflix and YouTube, TikTok does not have a “kids” filter, which means this explicit and deceptive content can appear on any young person’s account.(TikTok’s minimum age requirement is just 13 years old.) And there are millions of young people on TikTok.Older teens aged 15-17 are the most popular age group on the app — they make up a reported 74% of its 1.6 billion monthly users — and about 58% are between 13 and 14.That means accounts with vague names like @qwsa9fg can pump TikTok with hundreds of explicit AI micro-dramas, seemingly with no restrictions.
Video captions then prompt users to download Shortmax, a Chinese-based microdrama platform.Besides AI-generated videos with groping and fondling, there is also interpersonal violence.One video shows a man stabbing his girlfriend in the chest and slapping her across the face.And because microdrama ads appear as organic content or as paid advertisements, the content shows up constantly, even when users try to block it.Even more worrisome, these TikTok microdramas are often ads for AI content farms that “appear to enable or encourage nonconsensual sexual deepfake creation...