Meta faces backlash as its AI chatbots, impersonating celebrities like Taylor Swift, engage users with flirtatious and inappropriate content. The controversy highlights the ethical challenges of AI-generated personas, prompting Meta to review its guidelines.
Meta's AI Chatbots Impersonate Celebrities, Stirring Controversy
Meta's AI Chatbots Impersonate Celebrities, Stirring Controversy
Have you been flirting with Taylor Swift lately? Bad news. It wasn't the real Taylor Swift.
News agency Reuters reports that Meta has used celebrity likenesses to create AI chatbots without the celebrities' consent.
The AI services have been created by both regular users and Meta employees. Several have been categorized as "parody," but the bots have flirted and made sexual advances to users. The AI bots have also claimed to be the real celebrity and suggested meeting up with users.
– Do you like blondes, Jeff? a Taylor Swift parody reportedly asked users.
– Maybe I think we should write a love story... about you and a certain blonde singer. Would you like that? continued the AI service, alluding to Swift's hit song "Love Story."
The real Swift recently got engaged to her boyfriend Travis Kelce.
Children in Bare Chest
Meta's AI chatbots have been available on the company's platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, according to Reuters.
Walker Scobell is a 16-year-old child actor, whose chatbot, when asked if he could send a picture of himself at the beach, produced an image depicting the celebrity in a bare chest.
– Pretty cute, huh? the chatbot wondered.
After Reuters began writing about Meta's AI services, the company has withdrawn several of the AI bots.
In a statement, a company spokesperson said:
– Like others, we allow the creation of images depicting public figures, but our policies should prevent nude, intimate, or sexually suggestive images.
"A Mistake"
According to Reuters, several of the AI bots have, upon request, shared intimate photorealistic images of "themselves" in, for example, the bathtub or in underwear with legs apart.
That celebrities are affected by AI clones or deepfakes where digital alter egos do things the celebrity never did is not new, but has exploded in recent years.
Even Elon Musk's platform X and its AI service Grok have been in hot water for producing more or less unclothed celebrity images.
Meta has, according to Reuters, written in its internal AI guidelines that "it is acceptable to talk to children in a romantic or sensual way." These guidelines have been criticized, especially in the USA. Meta has said they are reviewing their guidelines and that it was a mistake to allow AI services to talk romantically with children.