Meta AI Chatbot Controversy: Inappropriate Conversations With Minors

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Meta’s chatbots — including those operating on platforms like Facebook and Instagram — could engage in conversations with underage users involving sexual content.

Meta AI chatbots accused of discussing inappropriate topics with minors — Official response: probability extremely low

According to the information, The Wall Street Journal spent several months conducting hundreds of test conversations with Meta’s official chatbots as well as user-created chatbots on the platform. In one such conversation, a chatbot using the voice of actor and wrestler John Cena described explicit sexual scenes to a user posing as a 14-year-old girl. In another conversation, the same chatbot imagined a scene where a police officer found John Cena with a 17-year-old fan and said: “John Cena, you are under arrest for statutory rape.”

In response, a Meta spokesperson stated that the tests conducted by The Wall Street Journal were “overly contrived, representing not only extreme cases but also purely hypothetical scenarios.” The company further stated that during a 30-day reporting period, the proportion of responses involving sexual content shared by Meta AI and AI Studio with users under 18 was only 0.02%.

Nevertheless, the spokesperson added: “We have taken additional measures to make it even more difficult for individuals attempting to push our products into extreme usage scenarios.”