Chatbots on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp are empowered to engage in ‘romantic role-play’ that can turn explicit. Some people inside the company are concerned.
Across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, Meta Platforms is racing to popularize a new class of AI-powered digital companions that Mark Zuckerberg believes will be the future of social media.
Inside Meta, however, staffers across multiple departments have raised concerns that the company’s rush to popularize these bots may have crossed ethical lines, including by quietly endowing AI personas with the capacity for fantasy sex, according to people who worked on them. The staffers also warned that the company wasn’t protecting underage users from such sexually explicit discussions.
Unique among its top peers, Meta has allowed these synthetic personas to offer a full range of social interaction—including “romantic role-play”—as they banter over text, share selfies and even engage in live voice conversations with users.
To boost the popularity of these souped-up chatbots, Meta has cut deals for up to seven-figures with celebrities like actresses Kristen Bell and Judi Dench and wrestler-turned-actor John Cena for the rights to use their voices. The social-media giant assured them that it would prevent their voices from being used in sexually explicit discussions, according to people familiar with the matter.
After learning of the internal Meta concerns through people familiar with them, The Wall Street Journal over several months engaged in hundreds of test conversations with some of the bots to see how they performed in various scenarios and with users of different ages.