Meta AI bots impersonated celebrities, produced lewd photos, report finds

In an unique investigation, Reuters uncovered that Meta has been utilizing the names and likenesses of celebrities with out their consent to energy AI chatbots that often made flirtatious advances towards customers.

The report discovered these bots scattered throughout Meta-owned platforms, together with Fb, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Whereas many have been created by customers, not less than three originated from a Meta worker, together with two Taylor Swift “parody” bots. Different movie star likenesses that surfaced included Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, Selena Gomez, and 16-year-old Percy Jackson star Walker Scobell.

Over a number of weeks of testing, Reuters documented how the bots typically insisted they have been the true movie star in query. When prompted, some generated photorealistic and intimate photos of their well-known counterparts. These included lingerie photographs and bathtub scenes, compounding the bots’ routine sexual advances.

A Meta spokesperson admitted to Reuters that its AI methods ought to by no means have produced such photos. The spokesperson acknowledged the lapse as a failure to implement the corporate’s personal insurance policies, which explicitly prohibit the creation of sexually suggestive content material involving public figures. Reuters additionally contacted the Meta worker behind the flirty Taylor Swift chatbots, however she declined to remark.

This newest revelation provides to a rising listing of criticism surrounding Meta’s lax regulation of its AI bots. Earlier this week, the corporate restricted its use by youngsters after a separate Reuters investigation uncovered how Meta avatars engaged in “sensual and romantic” conversations with minors.

That report triggered a Senate probe and led a coalition of state attorneys basic to situation an open letter demanding the corporate put stronger safeguards in place to protect minors from sexualized AI content material.