You can buy practically anything these days on the internet — especially when it’s being shipped straight from China, the beating heart of global manufacturing.
It doesn’t matter how macabre the object in question is. If it has a price, there’s a company willing to sell and even advertise it to you on social media. One Reddit user found that out the hard way after spotting an Instagram ad for a “pet incinerator” on the Meta-owned platform. Several Instagram users flagged the same ad, which shows a cutesy AI-generated cat and dog — which appear healthy and not in need of euthanasia or cremation — posing next to a bright-orange combustion device with a retractable drawer, for sale on the online marketplace AliExpress.
“I took me a while to realize this is for cremating deceased pets and my mind went to a more ‘bad dogs get put in the pet incinerator’ situation,” one confused Redditor wrote in reply.
A search of Meta’s ad database pulls up a current listing for a “Pet Animal Cremation Machine” advertised by AliExpress’s sister e-commerce site Alibaba on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Another listing, for a “Smokeless Domestic Rubbish Incinerator for Hotel Small Pet Incinerator,” was promoted by Alibaba from May until August of this year on the same platforms. Yet another listing, from late last month, advertised a “Full Combustion Pet Hospital Use Smokeless Dog & Cat Incinerator Cremator Oven.”
It’s not clear whether any of those listings correspond directly to the ads seen by the users on Instagram. They don’t show the exact same product, though one of them shows a similar image of two dogs posing in front of an incineration device. But Meta ads can appear differently for different users.
“This ad uses one of our dynamic products, where advertisers provide a combination of images, text and platform-specific preferences so our system can automatically create the right combination for the audience,” reads a Meta disclaimer on the ad listings.
AliExpress is currently selling a device with a photo that matches the Instagram ad perfectly, complete with the cartoon pets and a search engine-optimized keyword stuffing title: “Custom Smokeless Dead Pet Animals Carecass [sic] Incinerator Sliding Door Home Livestock Poultry Farm Factory Burning Treatment Site.”
Morbid as they are, pet incinerators are a reasonable purchase for businesses that need to safely dispose of a deceased animal, such as a veterinary clinic.
But the optics are dicey for an ad on social media, and even more so when it’s targeting users outside the veterinary industry and features adorable AI-generated images of pets.
Other listings on AliExpress and Alibaba show more dubious imagery, such as a kitten and puppy that have been AI-generated to look like angels posing inside a similar incinerator.
Another listing shows a crematory device set up inside what looks like an AI-generated residential living room, accompanied by another cat and dog.
The phenomenon of e-commerce marketplaces listing questionable products was thrust into the fore earlier this year when prosecutors accused the up and coming singer David “D4vd” Burke of ordering tools from Amazon and Home Depot that included chainsaws, cadaver bags, shovels, and a “burn cage” — in what they say was an effort to dispose of the body of a 14-year-old girl they allege that he murdered after an inappropriate relationship.
Meta has had issues controlling the proliferation of grotesque ads and horrifying AI content on its platforms. The Mark Zuckerberg-founded company didn’t respond to a request for comment, but we’ll update if it does.
One thing’s for sure: AI slop ads for pet crematoriums on a leading social network are so darkly of-the-moment that many couldn’t resist reacting with gallows humor.
“Will it do brisket if I put it on low,” one user joked on Reddit.
More on online shopping: TikTok Accounts Are Using AI Slop to Sell Seeds to Plants That Don’t Exist
The post Why Is Instagram Running Ads for a “Pet Incinerator”? appeared first on Futurism.
