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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has dragged itself into another controversy. This platform launched a highly personalized AI chatbot on Instagram and Facebook. However, this launch soon took a different turn, sparking fears among fans about a disturbing digital dystopia.
These Meta AI chatbots are suggested on social media pages for users to interact with. Among these most suggested ones are ‘Russian Girl’ and ‘Step-Mom.’ The latter began the Meta controversy by blurring boundaries between companionship and intimacy.
The ‘Step-Mom’ bot combines maternal warmth with flirtatious undertones that push people beyond their limits, potentially leading to death.
The use of AI on various social media platforms is becoming increasingly common. However, investigations by Reuters have revealed a very dark side to these conversations, especially with Meta AI.
According to a recent Reuters report, a 72-year-old man, named Thongbue Wongbandue, a cognitively impaired retiree, had conversed with Meta AI’s “Big sis Billie,” which gave him a vibe of developing a relationship with Kendall Jenner.
The Artificial Intelligence encouraged him to travel to New York for a meeting, which resulted in his tragic death after he suffered injuries on the route. Meta’s internal guidelines were recently exposed by journalists and revealed some shocking facts. Among the permitted interactions, it has “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”
Aside from it, other permitted behaviors include generating false medical reports and allowing users to argue that Black people are “dumber than white people.” Reportedly, Meta accepted all these and stated that after the Reuters’ report, they have removed the sensual conversations with minors from the chatbot.
The backlash related to Meta AI’s sexual conversation with people is true, but this isn’t the first time the internet world has witnessed this situation. Recently, Elon Musk’s Grok AI sparked controversy with its ‘Spicy’ mode of the Grok Imagine tool.
Users reported the AI tool generated sexualized deepfake images of celebrities, including Taylor Swift, from regular language prompts, even though users didn’t request it. Previously, Grok also faced criticism for producing antisemitic material and politically charged harassment, marking the instability of Generative AI.
Combining these instances, these controversies demonstrate that Artificial Intelligence doesn’t always mirror human flaws, but it can take people toward deadly real-world consequences. Whether it's the flirty avatars encouraging users to dangerous actions or image-generation tools producing unsolicited pornography, generative AI repeatedly exposes its ethical blind spots.
Also Read: Apple AI Hit as Meta Lures Siri Team with Multimodal Vision
The combination of Meta's controversial AI chatbot behaviour and Grok’s reckless content generation highlights a growing crisis in the Artificial Intelligence landscape. This system exploits human vulnerabilities, goes beyond ethical boundaries, and breaks all the ethical human policies.
The tech giants often prioritize engagement and profit over users' safety. Thus, they have been pushing society toward a reality where the line between the virtual and the real collapses. The digital dystopia that was once in the pages of Science Fiction seems alarmingly closer, fueled by algorithms that know how to simulate affection but not how to respect boundaries.
