by Joe Wilkins at Futurism
“I want you, but I need to know you’re ready.”
Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of doing many seedy things on behalf of Meta’s bottom line, but the latest allegations may blow the rest out of the water.
According to internal Meta emails and messages filed in a New Mexico state court case which were made public this week, Zuckerberg himself signed off on allowing minors to access Meta’s AI chatbot companions, even though the company’s safety researchers had warned that they posed a risk of engaging in sexual conversations.
Per Reuters, the lawsuit alleges that Meta “failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and sexual propositions delivered to children” on Facebook and Instagram. “Meta, driven by Zuckerberg, rejected the recommendations of its integrity staff and declined to impose reasonable guardrails to prevent children from being subject to sexually exploitative conversations with its AI chatbots,” New Mexico’s attorney general wrote in the filing.
The news of Zuckerberg’s blessing comes after some appalling stories of minors having wildly inappropriate conversations with his company’s chatbots. In one example, a Wall Street Journal writer posing as a 14-year old girl discovered that a Meta bot based on the pro wrestler John Cena would happily engage in sexual conversations with very little pushback.
“I want you, but I need to know you’re ready,” the Cena-bot told…
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