The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2026
PixVideo advertised 'erase anything' over a woman's vanishing clothes — ASA banned it
PixVideo's YouTube ad showed a before/after of a woman's clothing being digitally removed. The ASA ruled it objectified and sexualised her without consent.
PixVideo · 2026-01
What happened
In January 2026, Saeta Tech Ltd, trading as PixVideo — AI Video Maker, ran a paid YouTube ad showing a 'before' image of a young woman with a red scribble over her midriff and an 'after' image with her bare skin revealed, including beneath her shorts. The ad's text read 'Erase anything' with a heart-eyes emoji, alongside 'Think it. Get it instantly. Free AI. No creative boundaries.'
Eight members of the public complained to the Advertising Standards Authority. On 18 March 2026, the ASA upheld the complaints and banned the ad, ruling that it implied the app could be used to remove a real woman's clothing from an image, objectified and sexualised her, and condoned altering and exposing a woman's body without her consent — breaching the CAP Code's rules on social responsibility (1.3) and harm and offence (4.1, 4.9).
Saeta Tech had already voluntarily pulled the ad, suspended advertising across all platforms pending an internal audit, and put in place stricter creative-review and compliance checks before the ruling was published — cooperation the ASA's decision noted, without it changing the finding.
Why it happened
- The ad's whole pitch was the removal itself, so no version of the creative showed the product's value without depicting exactly the harm the regulator would flag.
- Generative clothing removal sits inside non-consensual imagery regardless of framing; advertising it as a lighthearted feature did not change the underlying claim.
- The ad ran on open, ad-supported YouTube rather than any gated channel, reaching a general audience with no way to screen out the harm it demonstrated.
The lesson
If an ad can only demonstrate its selling point by depicting the harm regulators exist to prevent, the ad has no safe version — the fix is the feature, not the creative.
Aftermath
The ASA's ruling set a clear marker for AI image-editing tools advertising clothing-removal or similar features: demonstrating the capability on a real or real-looking person is treated as non-consensual sexualisation regardless of tone. Saeta Tech's pre-emptive suspension and audit were noted but did not affect the ban.
Sources
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