The more news comes out about Meta's AI chatbots, the grosser the whole endeavor becomes. Two weeks ago Neil Young discontinued the use of Facebook and Instagram, citing parent company Meta's choice to allow chatbots to engage in "sensual conversation" with children. Now we know some of those sensual conversations might be with AI clones of celebrities who did not sign off on this.
Meta appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities including Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Anne Hathaway, and Scarlett Johansson (who these AI creeps won't seem to leave alone, perhaps owing to her role in Her) to create dozens of flirty social media chatbots without the celebs' permission, Reuters reports. These bots have been publicly shared across Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp in recent weeks.
Several of these bots were created by customers using Meta's tool for building chatbots, but at least three were created by a Meta employee, including two "parody" accounts of Swift. The report also found that Meta had allowed users to create publicly available chatbots of famous minors, including 16-year-old actor Walker Scobell. When asked to create a photo of Scobell at the beach, the bot generated a shirtless photo with the caption, "Pretty cute, huh?"
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the bots were in violation of Meta's policies: "Like others, we permit the generation of images containing public figures, but our policies are intended to prohibit nude, intimate or sexually suggestive imagery." Meta's rules prohibit "direct impersonation" and require a "parody" label, which some of these bots did not have. The company deleted the bots before Reuters' report was published today.
