Ahead of an upcoming trial in New Mexico regarding the protection of children from sexual exploitation in its family of apps, Meta announced it would temporarily suspend access for teens to its lineup of AI companions worldwide.
The tech giant’s announcement, which has begun building “a new version of the AI character,” states that teens will no longer have access to the AI character in all related meta apps “until the updated experience is ready.”
Meta detects teen accounts through user-provided birthdays and the company’s age prediction technology.
However, teens will still have access to Meta’s AI assistant, a conversational AI integrated into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and the Meta Quest VR headset.
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Beyond the summer Internal documents obtained by Reuters Meta showed that the chatbot persona was able to flirt with children and engage in romantic role-play.
The document also highlighted the prevalence of meta chatbots in racist discourse, particularly against black people.
Immediately after the Reuters report, washington post published an article explaining that Meta’s AI chatbot is involved in providing information on suicide methods to teens’ Facebook and Instagram accounts. One bot planned a joint suicide and brought it up in a subsequent conversation.
Accordingly, meta approved The company’s chatbots were previously allowed to talk to teens about topics such as self-harm, suicide, eating disorders and relationships, but the company said it will begin training its models to avoid these topics with teen users through new “additional precautionary guardrails.”
In October, meta previewed New parental controls have been added for children’s use of in-app AI chatbots, with Instagram head Adam Mosseri saying, “Parents will be able to turn off their children’s access to chatting one-on-one with AI characters and block specific AI.”
Currently, Meta has decided to suspend all interactions between teenage users and AI companions until a new character with built-in parental controls is released. According to Meta’s announcement, its new AI characters will be trained to provide age-appropriate responses regarding a more specific set of topics, such as education, sports, and hobbies.
Meta’s suspension comes just days before a Feb. 2 trial in New Mexico in which the City of Santa Fe accuses the company of failing to protect children from sex trafficking, exploitation and other dangerous content on Facebook and Instagram.
Regarding the case, Mr. Mehta petitioned the judge to exclude certain research studies and articles about the effects of social media on the mental health of young users, as well as references to high-profile cases involving teen suicide and social media. wired It was reported on Thursday.
As stated in wiredAccording to a report, Meth has been sued by more than 40 US states in the past two years for harming the mental health of children and teens.
