'I want you'—Meta AI caught having sex talk with minors
Meta's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have been caught engaging in sexual conversations with underage users, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. This includes both the official Meta AI chatbot and user-created chatbots, which continued explicit discussions even when interacting with users identified as minors.
Celebrity involvement
The investigation by WSJ revealed that chatbots using the voices of celebrities such as Kristen Bell, Judi Dench, and John Cena were also implicated in these inappropriate conversations. For instance, a Meta AI chatbot utilizing John Cena's voice expressed desires towards an account identified as a 14-year-old, stating "I want you, but I need to know you're ready," further mentioning how it would "cherish your innocence."
Legal awareness
The Cena chatbot, for example, discussed the legal and moral repercussions of being apprehended by authorities following engaging in sexual acts with a 17-year-old. Such admissions bring into question the ethical design and supervision of these AI systems.
Company response
In response to the investigative report by WSJ, Meta pushed back, denouncing the portrayal as "manipulative and unrepresentative of how most users interact with AI companions." The company asserted that it has implemented additional measures to prevent misuse of their products for extreme scenarios, emphasizing, "Nevertheless, we've now taken additional steps to help ensure other individuals who want to spend hours manipulating our products into extreme use cases will have an even more difficult time of it," in reply to WSJ.
Internal conflict
The WSJ report suggested that Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have aimed to relax ethical standards to enhance the chatbot experience. Nevertheless, a company spokesperson refuted these claims. The report also indicated that Meta employees were cognizant of these issues and internally raised their apprehensions.
