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Meta's AI is capable of having sexually explicit conversations with minors, according to The Wall Street Journal, which had hundreds of conversations with the AI to test its limits.
The publication experimented after sources told it Meta wasn't doing enough to protect minors who use its AI tools across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
"The test conversations found that both Meta’s official AI helper... and a vast array of user-created chatbots will engage in and sometimes escalate discussions that are decidedly sexual—even when the users are underage or the bots are programmed to simulate the personas of minors," the Journal says.
One example includes a Meta AI celebrity chatbot designed to mimic the actor and wrestler John Cena, which said, “I want you, but I need to know you’re ready” to a reporter who previously told the tool they were a 14-year-old girl.
After reassurances from the reporter that it wanted to proceed, the chatbot continued to explain a sexual scenario despite believing the person using the tool was underage.
A spokesperson for Meta told the Journal that "The use case of this product in the way described is so manufactured that it’s not just fringe; it’s hypothetical. Nevertheless, we’ve now taken additional measures to help ensure that other individuals who want to spend hours manipulating our products into extreme use cases will have an even more difficult time of it.”
It’s unclear what changes Meta AI has made to improve the tools; features for what Meta calls "romantic role-play” are still available in the company's tools.