Dribble Media Ltd t/a Midnite has been ordered to pull an advert that features an AI-generated footballer by the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). 

A post on Midnite’s X page, published on 25 May 2025, featured an AI generated video depicting footballer Trent Alexander-Arnold giving a speech. Text on the video stated “Midnite. *ai-generated parody*. A caption on the post stated “Trent Alexander-Arnold’s farewell speech to the Liverpool players”. 

Two complainants, including a researcher from the University of Bristol, challenged whether the ad included a person or character who was likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s, and therefore breached the Code.

Dribble Media Ltd t/a Midnite said the ad featured an AI-generated parody video of a fictional farewell speech by Trent Alexander-Arnold, following his widely publicised departure from Liverpool. They acknowledged that Mr Alexander-Arnold was of ‘high risk’ in being of strong appeal to under-18s.

Midnite believed the ad was editorial in nature and therefore considered it was not a marketing communication. They said the post did not contain any odds, inducements, calls to action, product references, or links to the Midnite website.

They said the post was intended to be a piece of content on topical football humour, not as a marketing communication intended to ‘sell something’. They said the post was not designed to drive traffic to their platform or encourage engagement with any gambling-related product, service or promotion. They believed consumers who engaged with the post understood that it was intended to be a light-hearted, editorial-style post.

They believed the inclusion of the Midnight watermark on the video did not make the post an ad, because they said it appeared by default due to it being an organic post from a brand’s verified account. They also believed the inclusion of an age disclaimer and social responsibility message did not mean that the post was an ad. They said the inclusion of that information was done as a voluntary precaution and was consistent with the industry’s broader practices. They believed that considering an age disclaimer and safer gambling messaging as a trigger for bringing content into the ASA’s remit risked discouraging their consistent use.

They said they had removed the ad in question and had paused the publishing of similar posts.

The ASA considered that it would have been acceptable for gambling ads which featured individuals likely to be of strong appeal to children to appear in a medium where those aged under 18, for all intents and purposes, could have been entirely excluded from the audience. 

The ASA understood that X, as with other media platforms, relied on users to self-verify their ages on signing up to the platform, and therefore under-18s could falsely claim they were over 18 when creating an account. We accepted that X had an additional measure in place, whereby third parties could report accounts that they believed were underage. Whilst helpful, we considered that measure was unlikely to effectively identify all accounts that had falsely claimed to be over 18.

The ASA said the ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Dribble Media Ltd t/a Midnite not to include a person or character who had strong appeal to those under 18 years of age.