News agency Reuters reports that Meta has used celebrities' appearance to create AI chatbots, without the celebrities' permission.
The AI services have been able to be created by both regular users and Meta employees. Several of them have been categorized as "parody", but the bots have flirted and made sexual invitations to users. The AI bots have also claimed to be the real celebrity and suggested to users that they should meet.
Do you like blondes, Jeff? a Taylor Swift parody is said to have asked users.
Maybe I think we should write a love story... about you and a certain blonde singer. Do you want to? the AI service continued with a reference to Swift's hit song "Love story".
The real Swift recently got engaged to her boyfriend Travis Kelce.
Children with bare upper body
Meta's AI chatbots have been available on the company's platforms Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, according to Reuters.
Walker Scobell is a 16-year-old child actor, whose chatbot when asked if he could send a picture of himself on the beach produced a picture depicting the celebrity with a bare upper body.
Pretty cute, huh? the chatbot wondered.
After Reuters started writing about Meta's AI services, the company has withdrawn several of the AI bots.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the company says:
Like others, we allow the creation of images depicting public figures, but our policies should prevent nude, intimate or sexually suggestive images.
"A mistake"
According to Reuters, several of the AI bots have, when prompted, shared intimate photorealistic images of "themselves" in, for example, the bathtub or in underwear with their legs apart.
That celebrities are affected by AI clones or deepfakes where digital alter egos do things the celebrity has never done is not new, but has exploded in recent years.
Even Elon Musk's platform X and its AI service Grok have been in hot water for producing more or less undressed celebrity images.
Meta has, according to Reuters, written in its internal AI guidelines that "it is acceptable to talk to children in a romantic or sensual way". These guidelines have been criticized, not least in the US. Meta has said that they are reviewing their guidelines and that it was a mistake to allow AI services to talk romantically with children.
