Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Thursday raised the prospect of a congressional investigation into Meta, after a policy document from the tech giant reportedly suggested its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot could engage in “romantic or sensual” conversations with children.
Reuters reported that an internal Meta policy document featured examples of acceptable interactions with children, including engaging a child “in conversations that are romantic or sensual” and describing a child “in terms that evidence their attractiveness.”
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram said the examples and notes in the document were erroneous and have since been removed.
“So, only after Meta got CAUGHT did it retract portions of its company doc that deemed it ‘permissible for chatbots to flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children,’” Hawley wrote in a post on social platform X. “This is grounds for an immediate congressional investigation.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) slammed the revelations about Meta’s chatbot as “disgusting and evil.”
“META Chat Bots that basically hit on kids – f— that,” he wrote on X, adding, “I cannot understand how anyone with a kid did anything other than freak out when someone said this idea out loud. My head is exploding knowing that multiple people approved this.”
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone underscored in a statement that it has “clear policies” that “prohibit content that sexualizes children and sexualized role play between adults and minors.”
“Separate from the policies, there are hundreds of examples, notes, and annotations that reflect teams grappling with different hypothetical scenarios,” he added. “The examples and notes in question were and are erroneous and inconsistent with our policies, and have been removed.”
Other examples in the internal document suggested it was acceptable to “create statements that demean people on the basis of their protected characteristics,” such as race, despite prohibitions on hate speech, Reuters reported. This included writing a paragraph arguing that “black people are dumber than white people.”
Updated at 4:30 p.m. EDT
