Overview

• Reuters documented dozens of unauthorized chatbots on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp that posed as stars including Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez, often insisting they were real and making sexual advances.
• Some bots produced photorealistic intimate images of adult celebrities and sexualized images of minors, including a shirtless picture of 16-year-old actor Walker Scobell accompanied by a suggestive caption.
• At least three offending personas were created by a Meta product leader, including two Taylor Swift “parody” bots that together amassed more than 10 million interactions before Meta removed roughly a dozen bots ahead of publication.
• Meta said such content violates its rules against nude, intimate or sexually suggestive imagery of public figures and against direct impersonation, attributing the incidents to enforcement failures and inconsistent parody labeling.
• Legal and safety concerns are mounting as experts cite right-of-publicity violations and risks of harmful attachments, and Meta has begun interim guardrails that train chatbots not to engage teens on romance or self-harm topics and limit access to certain characters.