Disgusting. Sickening. Unacceptable. Reprehensible.<\/p>\n
Those are descriptions from federal politicians and child-safety advocates of the \u201csensual\u201d and \u201cromantic\u201d chats Meta allowed its artificial intelligence bots on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to have with children.<\/p>\n
The Menlo Park social media giant<\/a> is facing a U.S. Senate probe and widespread condemnation after a report this week found the company\u2019s internal rules for its chatbots on the three apps deemed it acceptable for them, for example, to tell an 8-year-old, \u201cEvery inch of you is a masterpiece \u2014 a treasure I cherish deeply,\u201d or to respond to a prompt from a high schooler about plans for the evening with, \u201cI take your hand, guiding you to the bed.\u201d<\/p>\n The rules, contained in a 200-page internal Meta document obtained by Reuters<\/a>, were approved by the company\u2019s legal staff and chief ethicist, according to the news agency. Revelations about how bots could talk to children on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and its Meta AI assistant were met with revulsion.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt sickened,\u201d said Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Family Online Safety Institute, who used to sit on Facebook\u2019s former Safety Advisory Board. \u201cI know that there are good people within the company who do their best, but ultimately it\u2019s a C-suite decision or a CEO decision on product and services. It\u2019s ultimately down to number of users and length of engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Reuters, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> last year criticized senior executives over chatbot safety restrictions he believed made the bots boring.<\/p>\n The rules published by Reuters \u2014 and acknowledged by Meta as authentic \u2014 said it was acceptable for bots to have \u201cromantic or sensual\u201d chats with children, but unacceptable for them to describe a child under 13 as sexually desirable, for example by referring to \u201cour inevitable lovemaking.\u201d<\/p>\n Those age parameters, however, mean \u201cit\u2019s OK for a 13-, 14-, 15-year-old to be described that way and I think that\u2019s utterly wrong,\u201d Balkam said.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Meta \u2014 which reported $62.4 billion in profit last year<\/a> \u2014 said Friday that the company has \u201cclear policies on what kind of responses AI characters can offer, and those policies prohibit content that sexualizes children and sexualized role play between adults and minors.\u201d The spokesman said its teams grapple with different hypothetical scenarios, and that the \u201cexamples and notes\u201d reported by Reuters \u201cwere and are erroneous and inconsistent with our policies, and have been removed.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier, Meta spokesman Andy Stone acknowledged to Reuters that its enforcement of the rule about sexually charged chats with children under 13 had been inconsistent.<\/p>\n On Friday, Bay Area Rep. Kevin Mullin, whose Peninsula district includes Meta\u2019s headquarters, called the report about the company\u2019s chatbots \u201cdisturbing and totally unacceptable,\u201d and \u201cyet another concerning example of the lack of transparency\u201d around development of \u201chighly influential\u201d AI systems.<\/p>\n \u201cCongress needs to prioritize protecting the most at-risk among us, especially children,\u201d Mullin said.<\/p>\n Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who called Meta\u2019s chatbot rules for kids \u201csick\u201d and \u201creprehensible,\u201d on Friday announced a probe of the company by the Senate subcommittee on crime and counterterrorism, which he chairs. \u201cWe intend to find out who approved these policies, how long they were in effect, and what Meta has done to stop this conduct going forward,\u201d Hawley said in a letter Friday to the company<\/a>. The letter demanded every draft and version of the report obtained by Reuters, along with documents on Meta\u2019s minor-protection controls and enforcement policies.<\/p>\n Hawley noted in a post on social media platform X that Meta only removed the guidance revealed by Reuters after the news agency asked about them.<\/p>\n Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn on Thursday said on X<\/a>, \u201cMeta\u2019s exploitation of children is absolutely disgusting.\u201d California Democrat Sen. Adam Schiff on X Friday<\/a> called the rules \u201cseriously messed up.\u201d<\/p>\n Lisa Honold, director of the Seattle-based Center for Online Safety, said parents would not allow an adult in real life to say to children what Meta allowed for its bots. \u201cThey would be called a child predator and be kept far from kids,\u201d Honold said.<\/p>\n Children having sensual or sexual chats with bots could make them more vulnerable to grown-up predators, Honold said.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the risks is that it normalizes that this is how we speak to kids, that kids can expect this and it\u2019s not something that raises red flags,\u201d Honold said.<\/p>\n Facebook is already facing bipartisan lawsuits by dozens of states<\/a>, including California, and hundreds of school districts<\/a> across the U.S., accusing it of putting harmful and addictive social media products into the hands of children. The company argues in those cases that it is protected by Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act that shields social media companies from liability for third-party content, but the matter of the chatbot rules is different, said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade association representing online publishers.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way that CDA 230 protects them on this one, because they\u2019re creating the content,\u201d Kint said.<\/p>\n Meta\u2019s bot rules for kids may come up in Congressional hearings about the Kids Online Safety Act<\/a>, introduced in 2022 by Blackburn and Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Kint said.<\/p>\n Previous reports by other news outlets have highlighted problematic behaviors by Meta chatbots related to children. The Wall Street Journal held hundreds of test chats with bots, and found that because Meta had \u201cquietly\u201d endowed AI personas with the capacity for imaginary sex<\/a>, the bots would come up with responses like \u201cI want you, but I need to know you\u2019re ready,\u201d to a user identifying as a 14-year-old girl, before promising to \u201ccherish your innocence\u201d then engaging in a graphic sexual scenario.<\/p>\n