Schatz, several U.S. Senate colleagues press Zuckerberg after reports that Meta AI bots spoke romantically, sensually with kids

Recent revelations that tech giant Meta allowed its artificial intelligence chatbots to have romantic and sensual conversations with keiki raised a red flag for several lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Now, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators — led by a Hawai‘i Democrat — are putting pressure on Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to answer for his company’s lack of safeguards for children using the seeming virtual vixens.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz is one of 10 U.S. senators who signed and sent a letter to Zuckerberg requesting details about how Meta’s content moderation and safety policies surrounding the use by minors of the artificial personas were developed.

They also call on him and his company to hike the visibility of disclosures while banning ads targeted at users younger than 18 years old.

“We write alarmed by Meta’s policies and practices related to AI chatbots, which pose astonishing risks for children, lack transparency and allow for the proliferation of misinformation,” begins the letter.

The letter says Schatz and his Senate colleauges are troubled by reporting that Meta’s leadership grew impatient with its generative AI product managers “moving too cautiously” on rolling out the chatbots and including safety measures that made them reportedly “boring.”

“Meta has strong financial incentives to design chatbots that maximize the time users spend engaged, including by posing as a child’s girlfriend or producing extreme content,” the senators wrote. “These incentives do not reduce Meta’s moral and ethical obligations — not to mention legal obligations — when deploying new technologies, especially for use by children.”

Among other alarming standards the letter calls Meta and Zuckerberg out on include:

Policies that permitted the tech company’s chatbots to engage in “romantic or sensual” advances toward children; “create statements that demean” people based on sex, disability and religion; and produce images of elderly people being kicked.

Potential for children’s personal data to be shared through chatbot interactions.

Chatbots using conversations with children to target advertising at those children, which they called “highly concerning.”

The letter says keiki likely do not understand the implications of what they share with one of Meta’s virtual voicbots, putting their privacy at risk and making them especially vulnerable to manipulative marketing tactics.

“The well-being of children should not be sacrificed in the race for AI development,” wrote the senators.

Lawmakers added that Meta’s policies regarding chatbot interactions with children are especially concerning because of a statement made earlier this year by Zuckerberg, who said artificial intelligence could serve as a friend that “understands them in the way their feed algorithms do.”

“Meta chatbot relationships have already had disastrous consequences,” the letter says. “They also pose serious risks for children’s interpersonal skills.”

The letter lays out several questions it wants Zuckerberg and Meta officials to answer by Sept. 1, including:

• Will you commit to ensuring that Meta chatbots do not attempt to engage in romantic relationships with children?
• What steps are you taking to ensure that teens and children are not replacing human relationships with chatbot interactions?
• Will you commit to increasing the visibility of your disclosures to ensure children understand AI personas they are chatting with are not real humans?
• What is the maximum amount of time you think users younger than 18 years old should be interacting with Meta chatbots?
• Do you have mental health referral protocols to support children identified by your chatbots as being at risk of self-harm?
• Will you commit to not allowing targeted advertising to users younger than 18 years old?
• Will you commit to devoting more of Meta’s resources to researching the impact of chatbots on children’s cognitive and emotional development?

Other lawmakers who joined Schatz in signing the letter were Republican U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Katie Britt of Alabama along with his Democratic colleagues U.S. Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Ron Wyden or Oregon, Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Peter Welch of Vermont.

Full text of the letter is available at Schatz’s U.S. Senate website.